Honey/ thyme poached apricots with cream

The thyme gives the apricots a lovely genteel, aromatic flavour and is a perfect precursor to a cup of strong coffee after dinner.







Ingredients

1 vanilla bean
3-4 tbsp honey
3-4 tbsp brown sugar
twigs of thyme
1 1/2 water
10 apricots


Method

Cut straight down vanilla bean, open up, scrape out the pod and put paste into a medium sized saucepan.
Add honey, brown sugar, thyme and water to vanilla bean paste and simmer until the sugar has dissolved.
Cut into halves, de-stone apricots and add. Cook for 8-10 minutes until soft but not mushy.
If you cook them too long they will disintegrates and become like compote which should not worry you and is just as delish.
Remember to take out thyme twigs!
Serve with cream, or creame fraiche and, or vanilla icecream
Enjoy!

Recipe idea courtesy of North and South Mag
I pulled the photo off dinnerdujour blog as I forgot to take a picture. Check this blog out, to view click on http://dinnerdujour.org/

Lentils with sausages and thyme

Red lentils are the easiest of all the pulses to work with; they are dirt cheap, fast to cook and a good source of protein.
Thyme is such a aromatic herb, almost has soothing and calming as lavender. What other herb then could compliment the nourishing flavours of lentils and filling power of homemade saussies?

Any sausage would do, pork, venison, mutton. I am using Dave's tomato and garlic ones for this recipe.

2 cups orange lentils
2 cups, 500ml weak vege stock
2 onions, cut into wedges
2 tomatoes, roughly diced
splurge of olive oil
salt, garlic salt is best
3 tsp thyme
6 fresh sausages, approx 500g

Step 1
Pour some oil into medium to large saucepan and heat. Cut onions into wedges, add to saucepan and over low heat soften for 5 minutes. Make sure you do not brown them!
Pour in the lentils add two cups of weak stock (dilute one cube to 500ml of water) and stir to ensure they do not stick to the base of the saucepan.
Boil the lentils for 8-10 minutes or until soft. A couple of minutes before its done add tomatoes. Add fresh or frozen thyme and garlic salt and stir under.


Step 2
Bring water in a medium saucepan to boil. Add raw sausages, simmer for 5-10 minutes until they are cooked. Then put them into a pan and brown them to your liking.

Yum!