Lentils and Sausage in Wine

Alright friends, this absolutely one of my new favorites.  Made a half recipe of this last night and we ate it all up and both really loved it.  Give it a try.

Ingredients

• 1lb (about 4 links) Italian sausage, taken out of the casing and cut into bite size pieces.  We used hot.
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 carrot, chopped
• 1 celery stalk, chopped (I left this out)
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 1.5 cups of lentils
• 2 cups red wine
• 2.5 cups water
• bay leaf
• salt
• spinach

Method

1. Cook up the sausage.  When it's done, remove it and place it on a plate.
2. Cook the onion, carrot, and celery and cook until done.  Add the garlic and sausage to the pan and stir it around for a few seconds.
3. Add the lentils, water, wine, 1/4 t salt, and bay leaf.
4. Bring to a boil, then partially cover, and turn heat down to low and simmer for 45 minutes to an hour, until the lentils are tender.
5. Just before serving, add the spinach and stir it around til it's wilted.
6. Add salt to taste.  At this point, I added some cayenne for a little kick.  I didn't add enough that it was spicy, just to add a little extra dimension.  I highly recommend that.

The recipe didn't call for it, but I chopped up a tomato and threw it in at the very end (about 30 seconds before the spinach) as well.  It's an easy way to use up a tomato and add an extra veggie to the meal.

We ate it with mashed potatoes.  That might sound odd, but DO IT!  Oh man, it was so so good.  The other thing we thought it would be delicious with is parsnips.  Next time I make it, I'll either put parsnips in with the carrots or maybe mashed with the potatoes.  Though now that I think of it, maybe we thought that because that other sausage lentil stew has parsnips I think?  Either way, it'd be good.

There weren't a lot of herbs and spices in this, but we thought it was full of flavor.  My recommendation would be to make it as written the first time.  Then see how your inspired to play with it when you make it again.  I guess I didn't quite do that cause I added cayenne, but what can ya do.

Actually we have a few lentils left over, so I may throw a poached egg over that for lunch.  

The other great thing is that it only used part of a bottle of wine, so we had to drink the rest :-).  

Alrightly, enough said.  This was one of my favorite new recipes I've tried in awhile.  Enjoy!

Molly