Roasted Sausage with Red Wine and Fennel

This post is a bit late but I wanted to share a recipe with you that we made last Sunday for our Oscar Night Dinner.  Every year on the Sunday of the Oscar's my husband and I plan to cook a nice meal to enjoy before we settle in to watch the Academy Awards for the night.  I came across this lovely book as I was perusing our local library last Saturday called A Kitchen in France, A Year of Cooking in My Farmhouse written by Mimi Thorisson.  It is a beautiful book filled with gorgeous photos that her husband took of the French Countryside, food, life and wine.  My husband picked out a recipe for Roasted Sausages with Red Wine and Fennel.  I love the book because all of the recipes have simple, fresh ingredients.  I didn't have to go to the grocery and get 20 things like a lot of recipes out there.  The basic ingredients were mostly things that I already had in my kitchen. 

Roasted Sausage with Red Wine and Fennel

• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 12 good quality pork sausages
• 1 large fennel bulb, trimmed and sliced
• 1 large onion sliced
• a few Sprig s of fresh thyme
• coarse sea salt and freshly ground pepper
• 1 cup of dry red wine
• 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter

I had everything in my pantry or refrigerator except the fennel which is pretty amazing and it just shows you how simple her recipes are.  I had never cooked with fennel before so I was excited to try something new.  

Fennel

We used a Chateau St. Didier-Parnac Cahors dry red wine that my husband and I had been wanting to try.  Since it's a French wine this was the perfect choice for this recipe.  I used a cup for the recipe and we drank the rest with dinner!

PREHEAT THE OVEN TO 350

In a small bowl, mix together the olive oil and mustard.  Put the sausages in a baking dish and drizzle with mustard mixture, and turn to coat.

Roast for 20 minutes.

Add the fennel, onion and thyme, and season with salt and pepper.  Coat all the ingredients in the oil/mustard mixture.

Bake another 25 minutes or until the sausages are cooked through, stirring halfway through the cooking process.

Add the red wine and butter and roast until the wine has reduced and the sauce has become slightly thicker, about 10 minutes.

***Since it was just the two of us I cut the recipe in half.

The kitchen smelled so good and when it came out of the oven it look rustic and very French!!

We served the sausages over a bed of garlic mashed potatoes and drizzled the top with the wine drippings from the bottom of the roasting pan.

We poured our glasses of French wine and sat down and had a nice slow meal together.  I highly recommend Mimi's book, not only does it have fantastic recipes, it also is so pleasing to look at.  The photographs that her husband took are breathtaking and the stories she tells are wonderful.

Happy Cooking!!

Sara