Spetsofai - Greek 'ratatouille' with sausages

 

I got to know spetsofai at Stelios, my 'local' taverna in Mikri Viglia on Naxos, in the Cyclades, where they make you a huge bowl of it to order - so huge that, now, I order one portion for two, with a plate of plain white rice on the side.

If you look it up, you'll find spetsofai is supposed to be sausages with sweet peppers and, to make it hot, chillis. At Stelios, a family taverna, I doubt anyone has ever looked into the matter or cares much. They make it more or less like a ratatouille, with courgettes and aubergines and not hot at all, and as I first ate it there, I like it with cubes of aubergine. In any case, if you want an authentic recipe, Akis Petretzikis, whose recipes are foolproof, has one. If you don't really mind either way, here's mine.

As usual, making it is easy. The problem is to find a good sausage. Greek 'country sausage', as they call it on menus - loukaniko - is more rustic in flavour and texture than anything I could find in Paris. At the taverna, it's most often just grilled and served with a mountain of chips and lemon wedges. They didn't have it at the usual Greek shops in Paris. I tried buying herb sausage from different Paris butchers, but the meat was always finely minced (a loukaniko is chunky inside) and the flavour bland. Wikipedia, for example, says loukaniko is 'typically flavored with orange peel, fennel seed, and various other dried herbs and seeds, and sometimes smoked over aromatic woods.' So I kind of gave up making spetsofai until I discovered Profil Grec, a little shop not too far from me that stocks Greek sausage vacuum-packed (also delicious, tender smoked octopus, but that's another story). So, first find a loukaniko...

Re quantities... This is always tricky because it depends on appetite. I use two eight-inch (20 cm) lengths of sausage, an onion, three sweet peppers, a courgette or an aubergine, and tomatoes. This will give you two very generous portions, that could serve three or four, especially if, as Takis suggests, you serve the spetsofai with feta (too rich for me with the sausage) and bread, or a side dish of rice.

Having said that...

Cover the bottom of a wide pan, not too shallow, with plenty of olive oil (spraying it on, as some people do, is no use at all). Turn the heat up and add the sausage, cut in thick rounds. Brown them on both sides. Add a large red onion sliced, and stir it all round. Keep an eye on the heat: it should be lively, but you don't want anything to burn.

Profil Grec

Core, rinse and add three sliced sweet peppers. Sometimes I use all red ones, sometimes one red, one yellow, one green. Keep turning the sausage and vegetable over. I now usually add a diced aubergine. In the photo above, you'll see sliced courgette instead: yesterday, there was a courgette lying at the bottom of the fridge, so I didn't bother buying an aubergine.

Keep turning it all over while the vegetables start to soften.

Add a teaspoon of ground cinnamon (or a couple of short sticks of cinnamon) and a cautious sprinkling of ground cayenne pepper. Mine is very fierce, so the sprinkling is homeopathic in the extreme: be careful. You might also add some cumin seeds if you're fond of the flavour, but I don't as I find it complicates the dish. I do, however, add a shot of ouzo. The reason you see star anise in the photo is just that I didn't have any ouzo last night, so I added star anise instead and fished it out before dishing up.

Turn well again, and stir in three ripe tomatoes, diced.

Take the leaves of eight or ten springs of mint and snip them in with scissors. Salt, cover, and lower the heat to let the vegetables cook and blend the cinnamon and mint. Not too long, though: when the vegetables are as tender as you like them (I personally don't like vegetables al dente) and the sauce slightly sticky, the dish is done. If the sauce is still runny, let it cook some more with the lid off.

I just eat it with bread or, when I have guests, serve rice.