One-pot Pugliese sausage and potatoes

The dish that proves your writer right, that the simple ones are the best ones. It is a Tuesday-night one-pot with a handful of ingredients and no real skill asked of you, and it is also, if you let it, the thing you carry out to a long lemon-scented lunch. Same pan, same recipe, different pace.

1. Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Brown the sausage in the olive oil in a heavy ovenproof pot with a tight lid, turning until deeply colored all over. Do not rush this, the browned bits stuck to the bottom are the whole flavor base of a dish this plain.
2. Add the onion and the chopped parsley stems with a pinch of salt and cook, 3 to 4 minutes, until the onion softens. Stir in the garlic for the last 30 seconds, just until fragrant, and do not let it brown or it turns bitter.
3. Add the potatoes and turn them to coat, with another pinch of salt. Tuck in the lemon peel strips, bay leaves, Calabrian chili and the Parmesan rind if you are using it, then pour over the lemon juice. Give it all a good mix and add the water, or half water and half dry white wine for a deeper pan.
4. Cover and bake 35 minutes, stirring once at the halfway mark, until the potatoes are tender and creamy but still holding their shape rather than collapsing to mush.
5. Now the one flourish this dish wants, uncover it, turn the oven up to 450 degrees and give it another 10 to 15 minutes until the potato tops and the sausage catch and crisp at the edges. A braise this soft and comforting needs one crunchy edge to play against, and this is it.
6. Fish out the lemon peels and the Parmesan rind, they have done their jobs. Scatter over the chopped parsley leaves and finish with a good drizzle of your best olive oil, by the plate rather than the pan so everyone gets a proper hit. A big crunchy leafy salad on the side and you are done.

Make ahead for guests, which is where this dish really earns its keep. Build it right up to the oven, through step 3, then let it cool and refrigerate. It will take about an hour to bake from fridge-cold, so start it early enough to land at the table when you want to sit, and give it the uncovered blast at the end just the same.

This scales happily but hates a crowded pan, where the potatoes steam instead of crisping. So spread a triple batch across two wide roasting pans rather than one deep one, braise them covered at 400°F, then uncover, turn the heat up to 450°F and swap the pans top to bottom for the last 15 minutes so every tray gets its crisp. Build them ahead and bake from cold the way you would for four, just adding time.