What better way to brighten up a bowl of lentils that with a big fat herby pork sausage from Modena. If you cook it right (and we’re talking a couple hours of loving simmering here) it’s exquisitely tender and creamy. You should be able to find one at your local Italian deli.
Prep Time 2.5 Hours
Serves 4
Cook Time 2.5 Hours
Difficulty Easy
Ingredients
- Cotechino sausage – 500g/17oz
- Lentils – 2 400g/14oz tins of precooked lentils will save a tonne of time
- Onion – 2 small ones
- Carrot – 2 chopped
- Celery – 2 sticks chopped
- Sage – the leaves from a few sprigs
- Olive oil for frying
Method
- Cook the cotechino according to your butcher’s advice or the instructions on the package. This usually involves boiling in ample water for anything from 45 minutes to 2.5 hours.
- Finely chop the onions and sauté them in some olive oil until they are going golden. Add the chopped carrot and chopped celery for a couple of minutes and then empty in the lentil contents of the tins. Mix in the some chopped up sage and simmer away for half an hour, making sure that it doesn’t go dry.
- When the sausage is ready (don’t check by piercing the skin, as you don’t want to let the juices escape), let it rest for 10 minutes and then slice into 2cm/0.8inch slices. Fill a bowl with the lentils and add a few slices of cotechino on top. Serve straight away.