Carrot, coriander and sun dried tomato sausages

I've been catching up with the lovely photos and recipes at Mangocheek's (don't you love the name?!) Allotment to Kitchen blog. She's an ace veggie gardener and also posts some great photos of her trips around the Glasgow area. A few recipes caught my eye when I was reading about her latest kitchen adventures recently, but there was one I just wanted to go and make immediately - some vegan roasted veggie sun dried tomato and olive sausages. We make burgers fairly often but not sausages and I was really taken with the idea.


I couldn't use this recipe exactly though - lovely though it sounded - as it contained several anti-Scientist ingredients. Namely, the olives and the oats which formed part of the filler and also the coating. I also wanted to use up the carrots from our vegbox, but I loved the idea of using lentils and sun dried tomato, and also of roasting the veggies. So I tinkered a bit and was really pleased with the results. The flavours shone through, and the sausages weren't too heavy, as potato-based things can sometimes be. Olives would have been a great addition, but hey, what can you do. The Scientist liked them too - he did say that they could have been less carroty (I pointed out helpfully that they were carrot sausages), and suggested adding some sweet potato another time. I think that would be really good too. I roughly halved mangocheeks' recipe and made five sausages which was just right for us. I served them with some baked potato wedges, dusted with paprika, and also some steamed spring greens, all from the veg box.

Guest photograph: The Scientist took this great impromptu shot of our matching pair of pooks just as the sun was starting to go down last night. I didn't even know he knew how to work my camera :)

Carrot, coriander and sun dried tomato sausages - adapted from Mangocheeks
4 carrots, washed and cut into chunks
2 garlic cloves, left whole
1/4 cup red lentils
150ml stock
handful of fresh coriander, chopped
2 sundried tomatoes, soaked in hot water
flaxseed meal and chickpea flour, for thickening and coating - I used about 1 Tbsp of flaxseed meal and about 1/4 cup of chickpea flour.

Roast the carrots and garlic at 200C for about half an hour - until soft

Cook lentils in the stock until soft

Put veggies and lentils in a food processor, with the coriander, chopped sun dried tomatoes. coriander and seasoning, to taste. Blend until well combined.

Add the flaxseed meal and enough chickpea flour that you can mould it - it will still be soft and quite damp.

Form into sausages and roll in some more chickpea flour.

Cook gently in a frying pan sprayed with some oil spray, turning every so often.