Nigella Lawson's Italian Sausages With Lentils | Nigella Bites

Sausages and lentils are something my mother often cooked for us for tea when we were children, and now I cook for my children. Actually, the way I do sausages and lentils is slightly different than the way my mother did, in the sense that I use these Italian sausages and puy lentils, or sometimes the ones from Italy, from Umbria, lovely ones, wonderful sort of like blue-green slate colour. Let me just get some oil into this pan. So what I need to do first just Bruise a bit of garlic, get the skin off. Now garlic has cooked just the right amount. When you begin to feel or smell this aroma waft up, so now sausages in. Look at these, all fat-pearled and plump. These ones are called genovese, in other words they come from Genoa, and what this means is they have basil and garlic and they are heady with both. Onion on for the lentils and some salt which will Stop it from browning because these have to stay soft and somehow meld with the lentils. Very old wooden spoon. I think actually it was my sister Tomasina's. I actually have some here I think that were, this was my mother's. I dare say if I dug around for long enough I could find one of my grandmothers. And I'm going to do a bit of turning over. Lovely. So they're browned on all sides and what I want is to have a kind of lovely rich sticky gravy to eat with this which is very It's very, very easy to arrange, just a question of Pouring in some wine, a rather wonderful alcoholic facial I'm getting here, and then diluting it a bit with some water. You could use sherry and water too, I wouldn't worry about it. So lid on, heat down. Lentils, you see how beautiful those pebbly lentils, sort of oil-slicked bits of translucent onion all through. Right, so now I just give the lentils the same treatment as the sausages, in other words, cover with water generously. The lentils will absorb the water as they cook, heat down, lid on and they should both cook in around 20 minutes and that gives me time to do a little light clearing up and give myself a glass of wine. Maybe we should be about ready to lift off. So the water's been absorbed which is perfect, lovely. And they're cooked so it's really just a matter of putting the sausages On top of the lentils. I like keeping the string on, I think it looks so beautiful. Anyway, why give yourself extra work? And then squish down that bruised garlic that went in, into the sort of winey juices. And just turn up the heat to reduce it a bit because I want them to be really sort of rich and sticky. I shall do some parsley while I wait. Perfect. That looks about it. So just pour, look, those lovely juices over. Fling over the parsley. And that's it. I mean it's not fancy cooking, certainly, but just proper home food.