Uunimakkara

Uunimakkara (translates to Oven Sauage) is a traditional Finnish dish and really shows what Finnish food is all about, Simple, Filling and Tasty. This dish takes minutes to make up and so can be done on those nights when you are just too busy to make a more complex meal. There is literally hundreds of versions of this dish, however this is one of my takes upon this classic, warming food.

For it you will need:-

Some lenkkimakkara or for those outside of Finland and have no access to this kind of sausage, you can use Bratwurst/Frankfurter style sausages. One per person.
Good, floury potatoes (Duchess are good) about 150g per person.
Onion, roughly sliced, about 1/2 a medium one per person.
Cheese, any will do, Finland has lots of Edam so that is what I used but a nice mature cheddar will give it a beautiful flavour.
some butter
2 tbsp cream per 150g potatoes
1/2 tbsp of sugar per 1/2 onion
seasoning and some water

First preheat your oven to 200oC. Slice your sausage lengthways, about 3/3 of the way through. Then stuff it with your cheese, I find slicing it is better but grating will suffice. Then put on an oven tray ready for the oven.

Then peel your spuds and put into a pan of lightly salted water. Boil till soft, about 10-15 minutes. Drain out and put back into the original pot. While your are boiling the spuds put your sausages in, they will take about 10-15 minutes too, you will know when they are ready when they start going a nice golden brown colour.

While this is going on, in another frying pan put some butter in it and heat up. Add your onions and sweat until soft, then add the sugar and cook until starting to turn brown. Then add some water, about 2 tablespoon per 1/2 onion and cook until all the water is gone. This will make beautiful caramelised onions, just like from the burger van.

Mash your potatoes, add the cream, some butter and seasoning in there to taste.

Put your mash on the plate, put the sausage on top and the onions topping that. You can serve with some tomato sauce or mustard.