One think I love about where I live is the proximity to a big supermarket with a decent-sized discount refrigerator section! Off I nipped, and just my luck – there was a perfect piece of monkfish, just right for one, going for about £2. (Monkfish is never a cheap fish – this was reduced from about £5 – but you definitely get what you pay for.)

I got the basic idea from here, but used what I had anyway. This meant lime instead of lemon, and sweet pointed red peppers, raw, instead of roasted bell peppers – these worked really, really well and I’d recommend that variation. I didn’t have any thyme, but there was some fresh basil (one of my fave herbs) from the discount shelves as well: I put that between the pepper and the fish, as well as some between the pepper and the pan. It all ended up in the sauce, as I’d had to slice the peppers longways to get the seeds out and fish in. Turns out that monkfish expands and curls up when cooked, so this pushed the peppers open and everything went everywhere. This was not a problem tastewise!

The recipe is essentially steaming the fish in wine, instead of in water vapour – I’d recommend the general approach for monkfish again, as it came out very tender, moist and melty. Boiling would have removed the taste, grilling or baking would have dried it out too much. I’ve only ever had monkfish fried before, but prefer this. I would advise sticking closely to the measure of wine – I just did “a glug” which turned out to be rather more sauce than I needed. The monkfish loses some juices in cooking, so you really only need a small amount of wine for one serving, if you add some double cream to the sauce. Do pick a decent white – it’ll go really well alongside the meal!

For reasons of time and hunger, I just did oven chips and a pre-packaged salad along with the fish and peppers. The sauce went really well on the chips, and – surprisingly – was also really great to moisten the salad leaves. I ended up mopping up sauce with spinach and chard – mmmm.

Lastly, you might need to give the fish longer than 12 minutes – mine was still only lukewarm in the centre after that time. Possibly I ended up overcooking it, but it didn’t feel/taste bad for that, and I wanted to play it safe with a piece that was on its use-by date!

Ingredients:
4-6 good-quality sausages (I used Tesco ‘Finest’ Pork and Sweet Chilli bangers, which inspired the sauce)
200g (or a little more, depending on hunger) of tagliatelle.
2 medium onions, chopped in half-rings (ideally 1 red, 1 white)
Some mushrooms, chopped as appropriate (to taste)
Cider
~100ml single cream
1/2 red chilli, finely diced, or equivalent of fresh chilli-from-a-jar. Leave seeds out unless you really like hot food.
(optional) some sweet chilli sauce

Instructions:

1. Heat a shallow frying pan to medium, add oil and slow-cook the sausages, turning as necessary. Slower is always better with sausages!
2. In a deeper frying pan, heat some oil until fairly hot, and bung in the onions and mushrooms. After a minute or two turn the heat down and leave them on a low heat for 5 minutes, or until soft and browned.
3. Stir in the red chilli and/or sweet-chilli sauce.
4. Add a long splash of cider, enough to half-cover the onions and mushrooms. Adjust the heat as necessary and simmer the pan’s contents until the cider has reduced quite a lot. At this point, if you like, you can add another splash of cider and re-reduce.
5. While the cider is reducing, boil water and cook your tagliatelle as per pack instructions. When done, drain and return to saucepan, tossing with a little olive oil.
6. By now, your sausages should be done. Remove them from the pan and cut them up into chunks, roughly.
7. Add the sausages and some single cream to the deep pan and stir to coat everything.
8. Lastly, add the tagliatelle and toss thoroughly until coated with sauce. You got the right amount of cream if the tagliatelle is well coated but there’s no excess sauce in the bottom of the pan. Add a bit more cream and/or cider (to taste) if it’s looking a little dry.
9. Serve on warmed plates, enjoy!

If anyone cooks this and comes up with any modifications, please mention in the comments. I threw this together on the hoof without formulating a plan at any point – as such, although I was very pleased with the results, there are probably things that could be done better!