This week’s Please Explain is all about British cuisine – it’s much maligned history, and it’s bright delicious future. James Beard Award-winning author, cook and British person Diana Henry discusses traditional dishes including pudding, pies, pig’s trotters and more, along with new ingredients and influences that have transformed home and restaurant cooking in Britain over the past 20 years.  Her latest book is How to Eat a Peach: Menus, Stories and Places.

This segment is guest hosted be Melissa Clark.

Baked Sausages with Apples, Raisins and Hard Cider

A great cold weather supper for very little effort. You don’t have to soak the raisins in brandy if you feel you don’t deserve it (though I’m sure you do); boiling water is fine.

Yield: 6

Ingredients:

²⁄3 cup raisins
3 tablespoons brandy (apple brandy or regular brandy, or you can use whiskey)
2 large onions, peeled
3 eating apples, quartered and cored
3 tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper
8 sprigs of thyme
1 tablespoon soft light brown sugar
12 pork sausages
1 cup hard dry cider

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F.

2. Put the raisins into a saucepan and add the alcohol. Bring to just under a boil, then take the pan off the heat and let the raisins plump up for 30 minutes.

3. Halve the onions and cut each half into four wedges. Put the onions and apples into an ovenproof dish that will hold the sausages in a single layer (it makes life easier if it’s a dish you can also serve from). Add 2 tablespoons of the olive oil, the seasoning, and thyme and toss the apples and onions with your hands. Sprinkle sugar on each wedge of apple. Scatter the raisins and their soaking liquid in among the apples.

4. Heat the remaining 1 tablespoon of oil in a skillet and fry the sausages until golden all over; you are just doing this for color. Put them on top of the apples and onions and pour in the cider.

5. Bake for 50 minutes to one hour. The sausages will become dark brown, the apples golden and completely tender, and the liquid should be absorbed by the onions. Serve immediately with mashed potatoes and a green vegetable, such as Savoy cabbage or a watercress salad.

 This recipe has been reprinted with permission from "Simple: Effortless Food, Big Flavors," by Diana Henry (Mitchell Beazley, 2016).