Saturday, May 05, 2012

Sausage with Lentils and Chard


Wednesday 2 May
We wanted to use some more of our overwintered chard-from-the-yard.  Rummaged in the freezer to find something we hadn't had recently, and came up with a packet of Charles Bare's bulk sausage.  Googled "chard" and "sausage" and came up with this.
As usual, we read the reviews first, and though almost everyone had changed the recipe (as usual), several were right-up raves.  We heeded their advice, chopping up the beautiful rainbow stems and sautéing them with the other vegetables, and using 1 lb. bulk sausage to 3/4 cup lentils to about 1 3/4 cups water, with extra grinds of fennel seed and salt and red pepper flakes.
But in our universe, it takes at least 40 minutes to cook lentils, even before you throw in the chard.  Why does no recipe mention that the type and age of your lentils/beans/dried pulse of any kind makes a difference?  We keep our basic beans and friends on hand all the time, and the recipe timings always have to be doubled, if not tripled.  Wise up, Epicurious!
That said, this unromantic-sounding recipe was surprisingly good as a main course all by itself.  We will definitely do it again, just as we did it this time (maybe).

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