Serves four hungry adults
– 8 sausages, the best Italian style plain pork ones you can find
– 2 cloves of garlic, thumped with the back of a knife
– smallish glass of red wine
– half a smallish glass of water
– 1 onion, diced
– olive oil
– salt
– 500g puy lentils (don’t try with any other variety)
– baby spinach (optional extra)
– chopped parsley (optional extra)
Heat a slurp of olive oil in a saucepan and add the onion. Sprinkle with salt, and let them saute till soft and transparent
Add the lentils, stir to coat with the oil and onion then add water to cover. Bring this to a simmer, cover and let it cook for half an hour or until the lentils are cooked to your liking.
Meanwhile, heat a little, tiny bit of oil in a high-sided fry pan and add the sausages and the garlic. Brown the sausages for a few minutes on each side.
Add the wine and the water and let them boil up, then turn down the heat, cover and simmer away for about 15 minutes.
When the sausages and the lentils are cooked, remove the sausages temporarily to another container. Mash the garlic into the winey sauce (you may have to add a little water if it is to thick).
Then tip the lentils (which should have absorbed all their water) into the winey sauce and stir. (At this point, or indeed whenever you like, you could stir some spinach into the lentils too-you know, for colour and nutritional brownie points.)
Pop the sausages, either whole or sliced into generous chunks, over the top and serve.
You could also sprinkle on some parsley-see note about spinach for rationalisation.