Recipe - Sausages braised with Lentils - Time (30mins), Skill (Easy), Eating (Easy)

Better late than never! Maybe.  Yet again, it got eaten before there were photos.  Oops.  so here's a photo from the web

This picture is from another blog called Big Girls Small Kitchen here

Right, so who doesn't like sausages! (no-one) Who isn't sure about lentils? (most of us I suspect....).  I first had a version of this at the Nicolas Wine Bar in Canary Wharf here. And very nice it was too. Imagine my surprise when I found I already owned a recipe for it in the Quick After Work French Cookbook by Hilaire Waldon here - which I've adapted a bit to my current needs...


What is it? sausages cooked in stock with lentils and root vegetables.

I used Sainsburys Taste the Difference with caramelised onion here which I think gave great depth of flavour but that was only because they gave me them as a more expensive substitute. Normally I'd not be paying that much!!!!

Time required? around 30 minutes

Cooking Skill required?  Easy - needs to be able to use weighing scales, a knife and a pan...

Eating ability required?  Does need a bit of chewing, but can be made easier by deskinning and cutting the sausages into bit size pieces and cooking the lentils on a low heat for a bit longer to soften them more (or buying pre-soaked ones).  So I'd say easy!

SAUSAGES BRAISED IN LENTILS
Portion Size Serves 4 (though I got 5-6 meals out of these quantities)

INGREDIENTS

1 tbsp (tablespoon) of olive oil (or vegetable oil)

450g (1lb) of sausages - skinned and cut into bite size pieces.

It can take time to skin them, and the carer might not want to handle raw sausage meat - so either buy skinless or get the carer to cut up the sausages after they've been cooked if you can cope with the skins. If you are ok with cutting up your own food, they can be used whole.  Sometimes you can buy raw mini sausages or meatballs made of sausage, they could be a good alternative.

If you're a vegetarian, then I think SosMix would work well here

Handful of chopped onion (as you know from previous recipes, I buy frozen ready chopped onion)

1 carrot or a handful of frozen chopped carrots or frozen mini carrots (first time I'd used these, worked really well)

3-4 cloves of fresh garlic crushed (or 1 tsp (teaspoon) of dried garlic or a couple of cubes of ready prepped frozen garlic)

300g (10oz) green or brown lentils.  MAKE SURE the carer sorts through the dried lentils for little stones etc - you don't want to break a tooth! and to rinse them in cold water using a sieve.

The best lentils for this dish would be green Puy Lentils. But they're quite expensive. I used brown lentils from an Indian food shop, they're bigger and take a little bit longer to cook, but are cheaper! 

You can get lentils in a tin - these are precooked and could halve the amount of time needed for this recipe. I'm going to try this next time and will update the recipe with the results eventually.... you also don't need to worry about stones with tinned lentils. I hope...

approx 625ml (1.25 pints) of vegetable stock (using a stock cube - could be chicken stock cube, beef probably would be too strong, but if it's all you've got, try it!)

1 bay leaf

3-4 springs of thyme or a generous pinch of dried mixed herbs (just make sure you pick something that will go with the sausages you've chosen!)

2 tomatoes - either from a tin, or re-hydrated sun dried tomatoes or a big splodge of tomato paste.

Bizarrely I had no tinned tomatoes which is odd, as I usually have a whole row of them! So I used some ancient sun dried ones (rehydrated in a bit of hot water to speed it up then used the water but not the grit at the bottom in the stock) and a bit of tomato paste - whatever you have in the cupboard really. The tomato gives a bit of a bite and richness to the flavour. In a pinch, substituting some tomato juice for some of the stock would work just as well.

salt & pepper to season

PREPARATION

1.  Skin the sausages and cut into bitesize pieces if necessary (or make your sosmix etc).
    
2. Heat the oil in a large saucepan, and on a medium to low heat, add the sausage pieces, onion, carrot and garlic and cook until sausages are browned and onion/ garlic is softened. This means the onion goes a bit see-through, you aren't trying to get crispy onions so keep the heat down!
    
3. Add the sorted/ drained lentils and stir for a minute.
4. Add the stock and herbs.
5. Bring to the boil, (this means the liquid is just bubbling a bit, not jumping around and spitting), cover and simmer (ie turn the heat down a little bit) for 15-20 minutes until the lentils are tender and most of the liquid has been absorbed.  If you are using sun dried tomatoes and/or tomato paste/ tomato juice etc, add them here.
   
   CHECK HALF WAY THROUGH COOKING AND ADD SOME HOT WATER IF NECESSARY. It's better if the lentils are a bit wetter than drier, because once you have tasted to check the softness of the lentils, you can turn the heat up to gently boil/ evaporate off some of the excess water.  Personally I like my food a bit wet, saves on the amount of drinking water I have to imbibe.
6. If you are using fresh tomatoes, add them now.  Why add them later? so they keep their texture, so if you added them before the lentils were cooked that's fine, they'll just be part of the sauce now.
7. Season with salt & pepper to taste. Take out the bay leaf and discard. Also, if you used fresh thyme, take out the stalks!

Trying to lose weight? Then don't use the oil.  Instead, put the hot stock into the pan first, then add the sausage pieces, onion, carrot & garlic. Let them simmer for 5-10 mins, then add the lentils.  The flavour won't be as rich/ caramelised, so you might need more herbs, or tomatoes to compensate - or higher quality sausages.

SERVING SUGGESTIONS

• I eat it just as it is. If you want it a bit richer, then a blob of creme fraiche or plain live yoghurt (good for the digestion) works.
• Nice with a side of green runner beans or soy beans (good for ladies of a certain age) or fresh french bread & butter.  
• It gets better, the flavours develop the next day. Keeps in the fridge for 3-4 days as long as it's cooled fairly fast and refridgerated quickly (you have to be careful with pork)

ALTERNATIVES

•  Don't see why you couldn't use beef or lamb or venison meatballs if you fancied them instead of sausages. I'd still only use vegetable or chicken stock though, as I think beef stock would make it quite heavy (as lentils are quite meaty in themselves).
• You could also use bite size chunks of any meat instead - diced pork, lamb, chicken, turkey etc.
  
  
• Loads of different sorts of sausages - I think chunks of dried sausage like chorizo or italian or salami also works well (your carer might find it easier to deal with skinning & chunking dried sausage).
• Add other vegetables to bulk it out - parsnips would add a bit of sweetness (which would help if you're not using oil, to compensate for lack of caramelisation), turnips take on flavours, swede cos it's very cheap, red or green peppers would also work. Basically, if you've any fresh veg that you've not used up yet and is in danger of going off, this recipe can probably cope with a random variety! 
  
  You could leave out the meat altogether and have a medley of root veg instead.

Can it be reheated? Yes, it is even better the day after making and it is happy being microwaved (just add a tablespoon of water to stop it getting dry on reheating).

Is it freezeable? I haven't, but I don't see why not. You'd just have to be careful making sure that the pork is properly defrosted and heated right through.