Cooking Across 4 Generations

About time for another recipe, I think all these travel posts are making me itch for another holiday. Wait, that’s right Tokyo this month.  Anyway, after reading a blog post from the also well travelled and well fed Lorraine from Not Quite Nigella, I discovered Vic’s Meats Market Day.

Held every Saturday at the Vic’s Meats factory in Mascot, it is a chance for the public to buy restaurant quality meat at great prices. Each week they have a different selection of sausages as well as the good old thick and thin beef sausages. So far one of our favourites has been the lamb merguez in the chipolata size. This is mainly because I serve it with cous cous and raita/tzatziki.

The recipe is enough for two people but you can increase quantities to suit.

For the raita/tzatziki:

200ml pot of Greek style yoghurt

½ clove of garlic, finely chopped

10 grams onion, finely diced

Mint, chopped finely

8cm piece of Lebanese cucumber, grated

Lemon, a quarter will be heaps, squeeze the juice out into bowl

Salt and pepper to taste

Put the grated cucumber in your hand and give it a good squeeze to remove most of the moisture.

Place all ingredients in a bowl and mix to combine well.

For the cous cous

9 Merguez sausages, chipolata size

½ packet of pearl cous cous

50g finely diced onion

½ a garlic clove

1  cups chicken stock, salt reduced

1 Tablespoon currants

5 dried apricots, diced

20 Pisatchios, roasted and salted removed from shell

1 Tablespoon Extra virgin olive oil

1 Tablespoon chopped coriander (if you really love coriander add a little more)

Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the oil in a small pan, sauté the onion and garlic until soft and translucent.

Add the Cous cous and lightly toast, then add chicken stock reduce heat and stir occasionally, until cooked, about 10 minutes.

Just before serving add the apricots, currants, coriander, pistachios, salt and pepper.

Cook the sausages how you like, I pan fried ours and added a little stock to help keep them moist.

When serving the cous cous I like to lightly press it in to a ring(I cheat and use a large size pastry cutter at home), and the arrange the sausages and raita/Tzatziki around or over it. Garnish with a nice sprig of coriander or mint if you like.

I hope you enjoy!