I often feel that the real mastery of cookery lies in the ability to make everyday, storecupboard ingredients taste fantastic! Well this incredibly simple recipe is one such example! The true star of the show is the cream-cheese sauce – so easy to make, yet utterly delicious in every way! This dish is low cost & supremely quick, making it the ideal ‘mid-week meal’, when all you want is something quick and fuss-free. For this reason I strongly urge you to give this a go!

The broccoli and sauce can be served with anything you like. I teamed it with sausages simply because I had them in the fridge and they needed to be eaten up. But this would be absolutely wonderful alongside grilled chicken, salmon, pork-steaks, beef-steak or even lamb. Serve the sauce with your vegetable of choice to stunning result. I love recipes that are versatile like this – the world is your oyster!

The carb-content of this dish is incredibly low; coming principally from the cream-cheese (circa 3.5g net carbs per 100g) and the cellular carbohydrate locked into the broccoli (circa 2.1g net carbs per 100g). This makes it perfect for ketogenic-dieters, diabetics, gluten-intolerants or those following a paleo-plan. So ‘beat the bloat’ and go low carb!

Place your sausages onto a oven-tray and bake for circa 25-30 minutes, until golden-brown and cooked through. Once these are in the oven, you can start on the sauce.

Add a little butter to a heavy-based saucepan and sauté a couple of cloves of crushed garlic and a chopped red chilli (the chilli provides an interesting counterpoint to the creaminess of the cheese). Soften these in the butter for a couple of minutes, then add a finely chopped tomato, followed by a couple of tablespoons of full-fat cream-cheese.

Stir this in well, then pour in half a cupful of chicken stock (or water and a stock-cube), plus half a cup of double cream. Finely chop a generous handful of basil and add this to the mix, alongside a good grind of black pepper. Then simply simmer this on a low heat for 5-10 minutes until the water has reduced and the sauce is thick and glossy.

Bring a pan of water to the boil to one cm’s depth, and steam you broccoli for 3 minutes until tender. Strain this, and spoon onto your serving-plates. Remove your sausages from the oven and serve these alongside, then simply pour your sauce generously over the top. Hey presto, your delicious low-carb dinner is ready. Enjoy!

Browse this and other recipes by picture on my pinterest page: country walks in ketosis pinterest.

Thanks for reading and bon ap!

Adam.