THE ART OF FRIDAY NIGHT DINNER

Meals are a minefield in our house, but I’m confident that this rich ragout will pass the test

My family has strict rules about the meals you can eat on certain days of the week. You couldn’t, for instance, have lasagne on a Sunday. You could make your way through a batch of soup from Monday to Thursday, but don’t even think about suggesting a bowl of leek and potato for dinner from Friday onwards. The only roast you could have during the week would be chicken, and it would have to be served with salad and skin-on potatoes in lieu of roasties and gravy (woe betide anyone who proposes gravy on a weeknight). Fish is a minefield – my mum refers to salmon as a “midweek fish”. Curry, however, gets an oddly free reign – you’re absolutely fine to have it any day you like (well, other than a Sunday). Sausage and mash is a tricky one. It’s deemed a midweek meal in general, but has been known to slip through the net unnoticed on a Sunday.

When it comes to pasta, you are walking on very thin ice. Generally, pasta is considered to be a Monday-thursday meal in the Steafel household, but there are exceptions. To unpick these frankly preposterous subtleties would be to expose my family as even more mad than I have undoubtedly already revealed them to be. But safe to say, I’m confident today’s recipe would pass the Great Friday Test, if only because it’s the sort of meal that practically implores you to sink a couple of well-earned glasses of wine while you eat it.

This dish has all the depth of a slow-cooked ragout, but you can get it on the table in about a third of the time. Use spicy Italian sausages if you can, but any good herby ones would do.