I was wondering what to serve with some sweet chilli sausages. Having already decided to experiment with parsnips today the obvious choice was a parsnip mash. Parsnips are sweeter than spuds so it seemed like a good choice. As posted earlier I have not experimented a lot with parsnips and never done mash before (what a wimp!). It is very easy and in this case very similar to using potatoes.

Parsnips seem different. Not only are they a completely different shape to potatoes but they are less dense. You notice that when you boil them in a pan as they float better. I thought it would be good to add roast garlic and shallots to the mash.

Serves 4

8 sweet chilli sausages (more if you have hungry teenagers)
500 g parsnips
6 shallots
4 large cloves of garlic
olive oil
salt and pepper
100 g thin green beans
4 slices of Black Forest ham

Method

1. Pre heat oven to about 180 Celsius
2. Peel shallots and garlic cloves. Lightly salt them then slosh a little olive oil over them. Put in oven covered with foil.
3. Top and tail the parsnips and peel them. Roughly chop them and put them in a pan of cold water and bring to boil for 20+ minutes. Drain the water.
4. Parboil the green beans for 5 minutes.
5. Halve the rashers of black forest ham and wrap around a portion of green beans. Put them in the oven 20 minutes after the shallots
6. Start frying or grilling the chilli sausages.
7. After 30 minutes in the oven, remove the foil from the shallots and garlic.
8. After 10 minutes remove the shallots and garlic and mash with the parsnips.
9. After 20 minutes in the oven remove the green beans.
10. Serve the parsnip mash, sausages and green beans with a shallot or onion gravy.

 

Tips

a) If you happen to have water boiling when you are peeling the shallots, put the shallots in the boiling water for about 2 minutes. You can probably remove the skin with little knifework.
b) I have made the above method description look very complicated but it is fairly straightforward.

Verdict

My son who generally does not like potato mash said he would be happy for me to make parsnip mash again. Another son said he liked it but preferred potato mash....but maybe they were being polite!

Request

I must be a pretty lousy food photographer; I dislike the photo above but did not manage anything more presentable. My camera broke so I have tried another one but the lighting in my kitchen seems to be terrible and the other photos I took were out of focus. I am open to any tips on amateur food photography as I have a bit to learn...