A wintery sausage, pasta and bean minestrone type thing

A warming lunch for the kids after a chilly morning on the market

A recipe for you all which I meant to post at the weekend and got distracted. I am quite easily distracted at the moment. I have A LOT going on, what with the new book out (thank you to everyone who has bought it and for all the lovely messages about what you are cooking - these mean a great deal to me, PLEASE review if you can bear to), but also because I am having to take December off (not out of choice!) and I am trying to cram as much into this month as I can. Including all my Christmas prep. More on the Christmas prep another day.

Suffice it to say there are not enough hours in the day, my to-do list seems to get ever longer. At the beginning of the week I separated out the to-do list into columns - Non Negotiable, Would be Nice, No Hope. Even with quite a few things falling into “no hope” the other two columns keep getting longer. BUT I hope you’ll be glad to know that I am banking Substack newsletters as often as possible so I will still have plenty for you to read in December….

Anyway, pretend it is late Saturday afternoon and I am telling you all about how we are getting used to a new weekend routine in our house. It goes a bit like this….

I am usually up first, and put on the coffee and make sure Adam is up by 6 before I go out for a walk. Adam leaves the house just after 7 to get to the farmers market by 7.15. Lilly leaves at 8.15 to be there by 8.30. She spends the morning selling pies at The Pie Station. Adam spends the morning frying pork products - sausages, burgers, bacon, fried onions for Grasmere Butchers. We turn up at the market at 9ish and do our shop. They walk home together around 2. Last Saturday was the first day that felt quite chilly for them. Not for Adam who is kept warm because of all the frying. But Lilly is getting used to having to stand in the cold all morning and feels it. We have got her all the thermals and hand warmers etc etc but she looked chilled to the bone when she got home.

I love that they are doing this; earning money and learning all the skills is really good for them in terms of confidence and appreciating the value of money - the latter of which I have struggled with thus far with Adam but I’m slowly seeing the attitude start to change. And they’re lucky to have the jobs. When I was growing up, Saturday jobs were easy to come by - I was out working at a similar age to Adam - my first job was picking potatoes in rural Lincolnshire. We used to be in the field at the crack of dawn, finished by lunchtime, then on the train to Lincoln to spend the cash in the afternoon. But now a lot of the jobs have disappeared or are much harder to find.

Anyway, Saturdays used to be about lazy late breakfasts/brunches, but now they are all about late lunches and they need to be warming and filling and something I can pull together quickly too. It’s usually a very hearty stew type thing with lots of bread and cheese on the side. All the variations of those robust Italian soups work, especially if you have batched cooked beans to hand (I pretty much always have batch cooked beans to hand) and when you have tote bags laden with produce - or as is also often the case, loads of odds and ends left over from the previous week. The vegetables right now are spectacular. Perry Court alone had 4 types of cauliflower, 3 types of kale, several varieties of squash plus my favourite, sprout tops. I bought as well Jerusalem artichokes, chard, parsnips, romesco peppers, late fennel, the brightest multihued rainbow chard, bunches of thyme.

This is what I cooked. You can of course vary the meat, the vegetables, just about everything really. You will notice that it is only cooked for 3 minutes fast release - that is because it has much more liquid than I usually use for pasta. This means it comes up to pressure slower, but also, more liquid always means a faster cook at pressure. So pasta needs 3 minutes. Sometimes I do it for 2, then add more green vegetables and bring up to high pressure again, zero minutes fast release. And then it will sit for a while, quite comfortably. If you have a parmesan rind - or any edible rind - you can throw it in, and my lot always want lots of grated cheese too.

2 tbsp olive oil

4 sausages, skinned and formed into balls

1 onion, finely chopped

2 carrots, sliced

A few Jerusalem artichokes, peeled and sliced (or celeriac, swede, turnip, whatever)

2 sticks celery, sliced

3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

50ml red or white wine (optional)

A few kale or chard leaves, sliced (including the stalks, I used cavolo nero)

250g cooked beans (I used cannellini)

100g pasta

800ml chicken or any other stock or water at a pinch

2 tbsp tomato puree

A parmesan rind if you have it

A few sprigs thyme, a couple of bay leaves, or any herbs you like

First heat your pressure cooker - you are going to be frying skinned sausage balls which are likely to stick if you don’t heat your pressure cooker first. When it is hot, add the oil - it should glide smoothly across the top. Add the sausage balls and brown on at least one side - how long you take with this is up to you, the sausages will cook from raw in the time it takes everything else to cook so this is mainly for colour.

Move the sausages to one side and add the onion, carrots, your choice of root vegetables and celery. Push around the base of the cooker - this will help deglaze as the vegetables will start releasing liquid which will help lift anything that has stuck to the base. Add the garlic and stir for another 30 seconds then pour in the wine if using. Allow to bubble up until it has almost boiled off.

Stir in the kale, beans, stock and pasta followed by the tomato puree. Tuck in the parmesan heel if you have it and the herbs (I used sprigs of thyme and rosemary plus a couple of bay leaves). Season with salt and pepper.

Close the lid and bring up to high pressure. Adjust the heat so it is just high enough to maintain the pressure, then cook for 3 minutes, then fast release. If you are planning on adding any other less robust green vegetables, cook for 2 minutes, fast release and then add any vegetables and bring back up to pressure again. Remove from the heat at zero minutes - you can fast release or leave to drop naturally for a minute or two for a softer finish.

Serve with plenty of grated cheese as well as bread and cheese at the table.

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