Brussels Sprouts with Sausage

This dish is fast, easy, and supremely satisfying during these cold, dark Autumn evenings (of course, here in California 'cold' is a relative term). You can serve it as an accompaniment to a main dish or just eat it on its own with some good bread and perhaps a nice glass of wine.


You will need:
Brussels sprouts - the amount will vary of course by how much you want to make. I like brussels sprouts a lot so I use about 10 per person.
Good sausage - 1 round slice for every 2 brussels sprouts*.
Juice of one lemon
A couple cloves of garlic
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper

*It is imperative that you use a sausage you actually like and not just any old sausage! This dish is not a good place to experiment as a bad sausage will ruin everything. My favorite sausage to date is a kind my boyfriend would bring back from Kosovo. Unfortunately, I have no idea what it's called and I doubt it would be easy to find here. We did find one that was similarly good in a Russian grocery once...but anyways, back to the recipe:

Wash the brussels sprouts and remove the outermost leaves. Chop off the bottom-most part of the stems and carve a small x in the remaining stem part. Bring some water to a boil and when it's ready, add some lemon juice (to keep the brussels sprouts from turning brown and to prevent them from stinking up the kitchen) and then add the brussels sprouts. Let them boil for 10-15 minutes.

In the meantime, crush the garlic cloves and chop each slice of sausage into quarters. When the brussels sprouts are done cooking, drain them and let them sit. Heat the olive oil in a large pan and when it's hot, add the garlic. After about 20 seconds, add the brussels sprouts and the sausage. Sprinkle salt and pepper over everything and let cook a couple minutes, just until everything starts to brown.

Serve warm, ideally slicing each brussels sprout in half so that each brussels sprout half goes with one quarter of sausage!