Sausage Casserole with Beans

The clocks have gone back. It's dark by half four and the house feels like it needs warming from the inside. This is the evening for a sausage casserole.

There's nothing clever about this. Sausages browned in a heavy pan until they're sticky and golden, then buried in a sauce of tinned tomatoes, onions gone soft and sweet, a shake of smoked paprika, and a good splash of Worcestershire that does something quiet and essential to the whole thing. Butter beans go in near the end. They soak up the sauce and turn creamy and yielding, the kind of texture that makes you go back for a second spoonful before you've finished the first.

I make this more often than almost anything else between October and March. It costs next to nothing. It takes less than an hour, most of it unattended. Children eat it without negotiation. I wrote it down in the notebook years ago, just: "sausages, beans, Worcestershire, Tuesday." That was enough. The recipe hasn't changed because it doesn't need to.

We're only making dinner. But there are few better feelings than putting a warm plate of this in front of someone when it's cold outside and the kitchen smells like it's been paying attention all evening.