At least once a week sausages of some description will be on the Pigeon Cottage supper menu. As much as I love simply cooked sausages with a pile of mash and lashings of onion gravy, it’s good to be able to ring the changes. We started buying these tasty little Serno Peda hot smoked wild boar sausages from the *Wild Game stall on Bury St Edmunds market last summer and they were delicious on the BBQ. I wanted to find a way to use them in a stew and this braised version flavoured with paprika is perfect for chilly evenings. Farm shops and Polish grocery stores are good places to find wild boar products – the best wild boar actually comes from Poland and Lithuania and you can also buy online from Suffolk’s Wild Meat Company.

This takes about 30 minutes to prep plus two hours in the oven and will easily serve four people. It’s a one pot dish so you don’t really need to serve it with anything else, maybe some crusty bread to mop up any last bits of sauce.

You will need…

• A pack of hot smoked *Wild Boar sausages (roughly 9 to a pack)
• 100g chorizo, skinned and chopped
• 4 tablespoons of olive oil
• 2 onions, chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic, crushed to a paste
• 2 teaspoons sweet smoked paprika
• 2 tablespoons tomato puree
• 400g can of chopped tomatoes
• 150ml red wine
• 1 tablespoon dried oregano
• 3 fresh bay leaves
• 2 tablespoons of sherry vinegar
• 4 carrots, peeled and cut into thick chunks or a pack of baby Chantenay carrots
• 1 large courgette cut into large chunks.
• 3 medium potatoes, peeled and quartered.

 To make…

• Preheat the oven to 160°C.
• Heat up the oil in a large cast-iron casserole dish. Add the onions and cook gently for about 5 minutes. Then add the chorizo and allow the fat from that to render. The onions will begin to brown.
• Add the wild boar sausages and brown on each side.
• Stir in the garlic and the paprika.
• Add the carrots and allow the oil to coat them and cook for another few minutes.
• Add the wine, allow to cook for a few moments and then add the tomatoes, tomato paste, sherry vinegar, oregano and bay leaves. Stir thoroughly and bring to a simmer.
• Cover and put in the oven for an hour.
• After an hour, remove from the oven and add the potatoes and courgettes. Stir and return to the oven for another hour.
• When it’s ready, the sausages and vegetables will be cooked through and the sauce will be thick and rich. Check the seasoning just before serving, you may want a pinch of salt and pepper but as there are lots of rich flavours in the stew already it’s best to leave it right to the end. As with many stews, this will improve in flavour if you reheat it the next day so it’s a good ‘make-ahead’ option.

*This also works well with their Wild Elk sausages too.