27 June - mint tea & sausage and pepper pasta

It was another really hot day today, up around 30C, but very close and sultry. I try to drink plenty of water when it's hot, but it gets a bit boring, so this afternoon I made myself a pot of fresh mint tea. I roughly follow the way I was taught in a cookery workshop in Morocco last year, using gunpowder green tea and fresh mint leaves. You're supposed to pour a little boiling water over the tea first and swish it around until the leaves open out. You then pour that water away, because it's quite bitter. I use my glass Bodum teapot with a built-in infuser, so I put the green tea in the infuser, then the mint leaves in the main body and let it all brew together. With a bit of sugar and served in one of the little glasses we brought back from Morocco, it tasted spot on and really refreshing.

This evening I used up the couple of sausages in the fridge to make a favourite pasta sauce.

Sausage and pepper pasta

• Grill a red, orange or yellow pepper until the skin's blackened. Pop it in a container with a lid for a few minutes (to help steam off the skin), then peel and chop into chunks.
• Fry a chopped onion (mine was red today) in a decent pool of extra virgin olive oil (I think it's needed for the flavour here), with a little chopped or sliced garlic.
• Peel the skin from the sausages and crumb the sausage meat into the pan. If I'm using more sausages I leave it in quite big chunks, but with only two today, I break it up into smaller pieces. Fry gently until the meat is starting to brown.
• Add about 250ml of white wine (although I used an open bottle of rose today and it came out fine), plus some fresh herbs (oregano, parsley) and a couple of slices of lemon peel. Let this simmer gently for a few minutes. As you add the wine, it forms a kind of milky emulsion with the oil, which gives this sauce a slightly different feel from a standard tomato-based sauce.
• Now add a tin of tomatoes and the pepper.
• Leave to bubble away gently - 30 mins is good, but if you put the water on to boil for the pasta now, it'll probably be enough.
• Serve with some pasta - papadelle is good, but tonight I had big twists.