Giovanni's sausages with potatoes and rosemary

Hello everyone, I had a really delicious meal the other night. I have been dying to try out a tavola http://www.atavola.com.au/ restaurant in Darlinghurst and believe me, it was well worth the anticipation. It is a narrow restaurant with one of those great long communal tables in the front room, and then you proceed past a long, narrow kitchen and down some stairs into another room that has tables for smaller groups. The fit out is very cool with lots of interesting bits and pieces. Although in a gorgeous Italian restaurant like this I would usually always have the hand made pasta, having consumed an excellent dish of pasta the day before I tried the ocean trout served with a panzanella salad and it was delicious. Dessert, of course, was my main interest and I wasn't disappointed. We had a beautiful sort of chocolate pudding thing that was cooked to order (I'm a little fuzzy on what it actually was because the waiter had such a strong Italian accent I only understood about one word in every three) and it was served with the most beautiful (both to look at and to taste) raspberry icecream. MMMMM it was all good.

So, inspired by this Italian theme and the increasingly cold weather, today's recipe is a fabulous, I think Bill Granger, recipe that I found some years ago in delicous magazine. I adore sausages (and potatoes of course) so to me it's a fabulous combination. Kids really love this dish too.

Have a great week, love from Jane x

Giovanni’s sausages with potatoes and rosemary

Serves four

What you need:
· 6 thick pork sausages
· 800g kipfler potatoes, scrubbed and sliced
· 1 ½ teaspoons paprika
· 2 rosemary stalks
· 2 ½ tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (you may not use this much, it’s personal taste)
· ½ ciabatta loaf, crusts removed
· A handful of fresh basil leaves

What you do:
1. Preheat the oven to 200C.
2. Slice the sausages thickly and place in a large roasting pan.
3. Add the potatoes, paprika, rosemary, sea salt and pepper.
4. Drizzle with oil and toss gently.
5. Roast, stirring occasionally, for 50 to 60 minutes, until the potatoes are tender and the sausages golden brown.
6. Tear the ciabatta into bite sized pieces and add to the pan for the final 20 minutes of cooking.
7. Sprinkle with the basil and serve.