Thursday was meant to be a Visiting Person in Hospital night, but that had to be postponed, so cooking dinner needed to be done. A quick trek around Waitrose yielded lots of things on the reduced shelf, so I bought Caramelised Onion sausages, Unearthed’s lovely mini snack chorizo, celery, sage and smoked cubes of pancetta.

When I got to James’s house, I found puy lentils, a red pepper, and lots of onions and garlic. Dinner was born.

You will not need to add any salt to this.

Lentil and Sausage Stew

3 sticks celery, finely diced (with leaves, if you can get them)

3 white onions, roughly chopped

3 cloves garlic, chopped

1 red pepper, deseeded and diced fairly small

Cup full of smoked bacon or pancetta, cubed

1 bag mini snack chorizo, sliced, or 5 chunks of cooking chorizo

1 chicken stock pot

1 glass puy lentils (we had about ¼ of a box to use up, so 125g maybe?)

3 glasses water (basically 3 x the volume of lentils)

6 pork sausages

2 tbs honey or maple syrup

Dash Worcestershire sauce

3-4 tbs chopped fresh sage

Fry the onions, celery and pepper gently until they are soft. Add in the chorizo and the bacon and cook gently for 20 minutes.

Add in the lentils, water and stock pot, mix well, and leave to cook for around 25 minutes until the lentils are soft.

While the lentils are cooking, dry fry the sausages in a frying pan. Once they start to brown, drizzle with honey or maple syrup, add a dash of Worcestershire sauce and turn the heat down so they glaze, not burn.

When the lentils have been cooking for almost 25 minutes, stir in some chopped sage, and add sage to the sausages too, and mix well to coat.

Pile lentils into a bowl, top with sausages.