For St Patrick's Day... Coddle

This is a dish that divides people; you either love it or hate it. Thankfully, everyone chez nous loves it, so in honour of St. Patrick’s day today I made it this during the week.

It is a very cheap and satisfying, warming dish. It’s also very simple to make.

You will need:

3-4 sausages per person (I only ever have used the ordinary, plain pork ones, no fancy ‘flavoured’ sausages for this dinner)

one smallish onion per person

A large potato per person

After experimenting with several types of spud, I find the more solid ‘frites’ style potatoes are wrong for this dish. I can't remember the best type, but once I do I'll post it here. I've tried lots of sorts of sausages from various places in Belgium - supermarkets, local butchers etc, but the best I've found are the breakfast sausages from Jack O'Sheas butchers. Husband encourages me to experiment with the ingredients, but no. Coddle is a traditional Dublin dish, from the poorest parts of the city, so none of your fancy garlic or parsley. 

You will need a pot or casserole dish with a lid.

Put the whole sausages into the casserole and cover with water. Over a medium heat, bring them to the boil. While your sausages are cooking, peel and chop the onions, and peel and slice the potatoes to about half a centimetre thick. Once at boiling point, take the sausages off the heat and discard up any foam.

The boiled sausages with a first layer of onions

Sprinkle a layer of the onions onto the sausages, followed by a layer of potatoes. Keep doing this till you use all the onions and potatoes. Add enough water to just cover the last layer of potatoes and finish with a generous layer of salt and pepper.

Put the lid on and pop the pot back onto the heat, turning it right down to low. Cook for about an hour or an hour and a half, until the potatoes are tender. Coddle is a very 'pale' dish - it has little colour - so don't worry if it looks anemic. 

Serve in bowls, with pints of milk (if you can get any decent tasting milk in Belgium!) or pints of Guinness.

A steaming bowl of coddle. And yes, I know what the sausage looks like...