Black pudding and lentils

I rarely bother writing about "assembly" dinners (i.e. you take a lot of nice things and cook them and have them on the same plate and that's that) because I reckon you can probably work that kind of stuff out for yourself. But I was moved to write about this farewell dinner my husband made for me on Sunday night before disappearing for another week's filming.

We have in this house, I think, quite an odd diet. We don't eat pasta or potatoes except in emergencies and limit fish to very special occasions.

We also rarely - like, never - eat steak or fillet or any prime cuts of anything. Not even free-range organic stuff. We mostly eat the offcuts - belly, shin, cheeks, wings, beaks, feet, ears etc - to assuage our complex feelings about eating animals. By living off these odds and ends we are not the ones driving intensive farming and the slaughter of animals, (killed primarily for "prime" cuts like steak), we are merely mopping up the leftovers, giving a home to the scrag ends that would otherwise go in the bin.

But then this weekend because we were feeling out of sorts my husband bought from the farmers' market some really properly luxe fillet steak. And it was FUCKING AMAZING. We bought too much and roasted it with half a baked potato each (just to keep our spirits up) a couple of marrow bones and a parsley salad and then had the leftovers in sandwiches the next day.

From the same butcher (Twelve Green Acres, if you are interested) we also bought some fantastic black pudding and my husband made it for dinner on a bed of lentils and popped a coddled egg on top. And it was as nice as the fillet steak - just in a slightly different way.

Black pudding and lentils, by Giles

For 2

2 eggs
100g (dried weight) green lentils
1 onion
salt and pepper
1 or 2 discs (each) of the best-quality black pudding you can get your hands on
oil for frying
(We had some tired tomatoes hanging about so roasted them for 30 mins, but by all means leave them out.)

1 Boil your lentils until very soft - about 25 minutes in salted water.

2 In a frying pan fry the chopped onion gently in oil for about 15 minutes. If you had some chorizo knocking about you could fry a few cubes of that alongside it, but it's not essential. I have not included garlic because my friend Henry, who is a chef, said the other day that he's stopped automatically adding garlic to everything he cooks because he thinks it's lazy and makes everything taste the same. But you are free to add garlic if you fancy it.

3 Add the lentils and heat through. Shift the lentils and onions to one side when done and fry off your discs of black pudding in the same pan to save on washing up.

4 If you have an egg coddler, do two eggs in that. If not, poach if you're able to. If not, just fry the buggers.

5 Assemble your dinner by putting down a layer of lentils, then the black pudding then the egg on top.