Sausage, Fried Potatoes and Spicy Beans

Sliced sausage on hot and spicy beans with fried potatoes and yellow tomatoes

Sausages, chips and beans is a very popular combination throughout the United Kingdom and is probably a popular stereotype among foreigners of typically unimaginative and boring British food. The one principal difference in Scotland compared to the rest of the country is simply that the sausages will usually be of the sliced or Lorne variety as opposed to the more widely popular bangers. It is, however, incredibly easy to vary this age old dish so as to make it almost unrecognisable without any extra effort or even that many extra ingredients. This is just one example of the ways in which this is possible and this creation takes account above all of the modern day love of spices and spicy food in this country.

Ingredients (Serves 1)

1 medium sized baking potato
1 sliced (Lorne) sausage
2 tablespoons vegetable or sunflower oil
Salt and pepper
8 ounce (small) can baked beans in tomato sauce
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 small green chilli
3 small yellow (or red) tomatoes on the vine
 

Sausage and potato slices are put on to fry

Directions

Pour the vegetable oil in to a non-stick frying pan and bring it up to a medium heat. Wash (but don't peel) and dry the potato. Trim off and discard each end and slice to a thickness of just less than a quarter of an inch (1/2 a centimetre). Season the potato slices on both sides with salt and pepper. Lay the sliced sausage in the centre of the pan and arrange the potato slices around it. Turn the potato slices every three to four minutes and fry the sausage for five minutes each side.

Spices are added to beans before they are gently heated

Pour the beans in to a small saucepan. Add the turmeric, a generous pinch of black pepper and the finely sliced green chilli. Put the saucepan on to a low to medium heat just before the sausage is ready and stir every minute or so with a wooden spoon.

Yellow tomatoes are added to pan with part fried potatoes

When the sausage is ready, the potato slices will still need a further few minutes. Lift the sausage from the pan to a heated plate and cover with tinfoil to keep it warm. Gently sit the tomatoes (still on the vine) in the space in the pan vacated by the sausage, give the potatoes a final turn and cook for three to four final minutes.

Fried potatoes are plated around spicy beans

Arrange the potato slices in a circle around the edge of a deep serving plate and spoon the beans in to the centre.

Fried sausage is plated on top of spicy beans

Lift the sausage on to the beans and sit the tomatoes on top to serve.