Polenta is a wonderfull base for many vegetable and meat sauces with an Italian bent. I like to use it when I get a little tired of pasta. The grainy yellow flour is a type of cornmeal made from ground maize, which is cooked into a kind of porridge with a wide variety of uses. You can make your own polenta, or you can buy it ready made at the store.

For this easy week-night dish, I used the store baught polenta, which comes in a tubular plastic casing, and sliced and fried the rounds in oil in a frying pan. (Do this as you are making the sauce so that the rounds are nice and hot and crispy just as the sauce is ready to eat.)

To make the sauce:

Saute red onion and garlic in olive oil until translucent. In the meantime, heat up some water on the stove and pour a cup of the hot water over a 1/2 cup of dried wild mushrooms to reconstitute them. Let these sit for about ten minutes, then drain them, reserve the mushroom stock for another night, and slice up the wild mushrooms along with two cups of sliced domestic mushrooms.

Add one chopped red pepper and the mushrooms to the pan.

Add a splash of red wine.

Let this simmer for about 5 minutes.

Add the sliced smoked lamb sausage and simmer for another five minutes.

Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve the sauce over the hot polenta slices and garnish with fresh cherry tomatos and basil.