A super dish for a cold winter’s day that can either be served as a hearty lunch or ‘beefed up’ with more potatoes and a couple of cans of creamy beans (flageolet, haricot or butter beans would suit) to turn it into a main course.

The key is to blend only a small proportion of the soup to thicken it but retain the texture and visibility of all those lovely vegetables. It is also important to add them only for the time that it will take to cook them or you will have lose both flavour and colour. Extra potatoes and added beans or not, I would always have warmed crusty bread and unsalted butter available a plenty to dunk.

Ingredients - serves 4

6 Riverford pork sausages
3 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed & finely chopped
3 leeks, trimmed
2 medium potatoes
1-2 sprigs thyme
600ml chicken stock or vegetable bouillon
1/2 savoy cabbage
1 large Cox’s apple
salt, pepper

Method

Take a generous sized saucepan and sweat the onion and garlic in 2 tablespoons of olive oil together with the sprigs of thyme for several minutes - do this over a gentle heat so as to soften the onion and not colour it. In a frying pan, add the remaining tablespoon of oil and fry the sausages to brown and cooked through, set aside.

Slice the trimmed leeks in half lengthways and then slice across to about 5mm half moons. Peel and dice the potatoes to roughly 2cm. Add the leek and potato dice to the pan together with salt and pepper, turn gently to coat with onion and oil and cover with a lid to sweat over the lowest heat for a further 5 minutes. Now remove the lid, add the stock and bring to a gently simmer for 10 minutes until the potatoes are tender - remove the thyme, ladle off a third of the soup and blend it before returning it to the pot.

While the soup simmers, cut the slightly cooled sausages into 1cm slices. Shred the cabbage very thinly and peel and dice the apple. Add all these to the pot and simmer for another 5 minutes until the sausage is warmed through, the cabbage wilted and the apple tender. Check seasoning and serve in warmed bowls.