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In praise of Tuscan sausages


In the picture you will see our sausages cooking on what appears to be a medieval instrument of torture but is in fact the rather excellent barbeque supplied by the villa owners (which turned out essential as on day two the oven went on the blink)
It has a rather interesting mechanism that meant that once you had trapped the meat you did turn the meat but turned a handle which in turn flipped the whole grill.
We had Luganica (the long thin ones) Piccante (the big fat one) and normale (the rest) They were fantastic. Lisa suggested we set up ' The Italian sausage company' ... not such a daft idea methinks.
We accompanied them with the usual rocket salad but also some lovely little castellucio lentils cooked for about 20 minutes with some celery and garlic. Once you've drained them remove the garlic and celery and then add a good handful of chopped flatleaf parsley and basil and some good quality extra virgin.
The finishing touch was provided by some salsa verde made with

Ingredients

handful flat leaf parsley
20 basil leaves
tablespoon of capers
4 anchovy fillets
3 cloves of garlic
juice of half a lemon
extra virgin olive oil

Method

we didn't have any mustard which you would normally use but actually it was rather nice

pulse everything together in a blender apart from the olive oil. Then you have two choices

Option 1. take it out and add 6 tablespoons of olive oil and just mix together in a bowl
Option 2. add the olive oil to the blender and give it a blitz

the first option leaves everything recognisable the second emulsifies the oil and turns it into more of a homogenised sauce.
Which ever route you take it goes brilliantly with both the sausages and the lentils.

Add a table under a pergola, a decent bottle of Chianti, a lovely family and the sounds of the Maremma and life just doesn't get much better..... particularly if you leave out the mozzies

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