Saturday, February 25, 2006
Lentil Casserole with Salami and Sausages
I must be incredibly strange. I have a fridgeful of fresh food from my tour around town yesterday. Something I completely forgot to mention yesterday was an early morning (at least by my standards) trip to Liston's. I really wanted to get cheese, but ended up with lentils, barlotti beans, cream and free range bacon and sausages.You may have noticed from my earlier posts that there is very little meat in our diet. I used to be a vegetarian. Not because I didn't want to eat animals, but because I felt that the way our supposedly modern farm industry was operating was destroying the quality of our food and slowly but surely taking the planet down with it. And because at the time I was living in a city where we had no access to small farmers who might have sold me good quality food and the organic movement in Germany was limited to some whole grain pasta munching loonies so there was no nice food to be found in any of their shops. So I decided that the only way I could reduce the impact I would have on the environment was to stop eating the stuff with the worst eco balance: meat. But times have changed since then and good quality, locally produced organic meat is now readily available, especially in Ireland. Accordingly, since we've moved here, I occasionally eat meat again. One of the things I absolutely love are sausages. So when I found those great-looking sausages from Caheberg Free Range Pork at Liston's there was no stopping me. They come highly recommended and, if you can believe their website, have impeccable credentials. And after having tasted their traditional sausages, I can't wait to get my hands on some of their other products.
At first I was going to do bangers and mash again, but Lofty and I were ready for something new. We've just had a tad too much northern European winter food of late. Looking through my cookbooks, I found a recipe for a lentil and sausage casserole that sounded like just the thing for a lazy Sunday night. Apart from the salami, which could in theory be substituted with bacon, liquid smoke or even vegetarian sausages or even left out if you have none of the above at home, the ingredients are all cupboard staples, so no worries about having to do special shopping trips. The dish virtually cooks itself, so I could even continue playing poker without losing all my chips because I wasn't paying attention. And the best thing about it all is that it looks and tastes as if you'd spent hour preparing it. It's got a very north Italian feel about it, which would probably even convince my snobbish mother that lentils are a trendy thing to eat. I've made a few modifications to the original, so I do not feel the least bit guilty posting it here and claiming credit for it.
1 medium onion, cut in half and each half cut into rings
4 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, sliced
125 ml red wine
100 g good quality hard salami, peeled and chopped into bite-sized chunks
8 to 10 fresh sausages
1 can of chopped tomatoes
125 ml water
100 g green or brown lentils (I used puy lentils with excellent results)
2 to 3 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp rosemary, finely chopped
1 tsp thyme leaves
3 bay leaves
enough stock granules for 500 ml of liquid
Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a casserole dish with a lid or a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Add the onions and cook over medium low heat until tender. Now add the garlic, stir, and then add the salami and bay leaves. Fry until the salami is slightly darkened and fragrant.
Heat the remaining oil in a frying pan, add the sausages and fry until coloured on the outside. Don't worry about cooking them through.
Add the wine to the casserole dish and bring to the boil. Then add the tomatoes, the water and the lentils. Bring to the boil, then add the stock granules, sugar, rosemary and thyme. Stir well. Now put the sausages into the casserole and cover with the lid. Leave to simmer until the lentils are cooked, about 30 minutes. Stir occasionally to prevent the lentils from sticking to the bottom of the pan, but don't overdo the stirring.
Serve with nice crusty white bread.
Christine at 5:55 pm
