Indulge me please whilst I brag about the meal I did this evening....

[TheQueenSPeach]

because I'm normally on here being anxious about food and cooking and I'm now very smug.

Our guests have just left - we did start very early! We had:

Olives, posh crisps and vol au vents (well it was the Strictly Come Dancing final so the latter seemed appropriate!)

A starter of scallops wrapped in parma ham with a light dressing of apple and mint.

Sausage casserole - wild boar sausages with a rich red wine and bean sauce. Proper roast potatoes with parsnips and sprouts with chestnut and bacon. Really strong flavours which just worked so well and made the sprouts seem really quite mild. Just wouldn't have been the same with broccoli or other plain veg.

Homemade apple and blackcurrant crumble (served with a desert wine - poncetastic!)

Coffee (forgot to put out the chocolates)

Cheese - Manchego, Port Salut and a local welsh blue cheese.

I'm stuffed. One friend is a former food writer and she was sooooo complimentary. They took a doggy bag home. And the sprouts with the sausages, ooooh, you wouldn't credit it

I've felt like shit this week, seriously bad hormones (hysterical tears on Wednesday) and now have a heavy cold, so forgive me for bragging but it was just very very nice. Mmmmmm. [smug]

Wow, that sounds delicous! - well done you! Could you post the recipe for the sausage casserole? I'm going to do sprouts with chestnut and bacon on Christmas Day - you've got me hungry all ready!

ohh wow, that sounds gorgeous! Those sausages sound nice/

Oh I'm so annoyingly chuffed.

My sausage casserole is famous and easy peasy. (well, it's Nigel Slater's really, from the newspaper about five years ago.)

Brown sausages in oven.
Soften onions in a pan. Add garlic.
And here's the really tricky bit:

One tin of tomatoes
One tin of baked beans.
A third of a bottle of a spicy red wine (drink the rest)

Simmer for at least half an hour then put in the oven with the sausages and the juice from the dish they cooked in as the flavour from helps the sauce.

That's it! Aforementioned food writer was amazed it was a tin of baked beans.

mmmmm sneaky cowboy pie!

Incidentally, have saved your cowboy pie recipe to my "MN Cookbook" document in Word. Intend to try that one day.

Your sausage casserole sounds nicer, tbh, but the cowboy pie recipe was nice.