Proper sausages

 This afternoon I turned out 4kg of pork sausages  in Bout de Cote stylee...

That''s real pork 100% pork with a bit of seasoning. Tesco's had two for 6 quid deals on 800g packs of pork shoulder steaks. Four of those and the two packs of the fattiest belly strips brought the meat count up to around 4kg.

First job is to get the casings (skins to you and me) soaking in warm water. They come vacuum packed in salt and need to be cleaned and softened. I was using natural sheep casing today, perfect for chipolata sized sausages.

While they are in a bowl of warm water, mince all the meat with the coarsest ring on the mincer. I was struggling until I found I hadn't screwed the retaining ring on the mincer tight enough. The blades need to be tight on the ring to break up the connecting tissue. As it was any thing that didn't want to go through was wrapping it's self round the blade and the mincer just wasn't working. The skin has to be taken off the belly pork bun it's not wasted. Boiled, deep fried and then grilled has turned it into OK pork scratchings.

With the meat minced in went a bit of seasoning. 4 teaspoons of salt and 2 teaspoons of coarsely ground black pepper. And because I like the taste a good teaspoon of white pepper. 

The only way  to mix this is in a big bowl and get your hands in. I layered up the meat with the seasonings to cut down the amount of mixing that was needed.

My hand cranked sausage filler takes about 3kg of meat  at a time. The fiddliest job is getting the casing started on the nozzle. This gets easier when you have done it a few times. With that done and the end knotted it's time to push you sausage (ooer missus) and while this can be managed single handed it is much easier to have someone crank while someone else controls the feeding of the skin. The idea is to have a nice even fill. So the trick is a steady turn on the handle and an even feeding of the skin. Our artisan sausages are somewhat lumpy and rustic but at least you can see they are hand made.


I was running something like 3metres of casing at a time because it is easier to handle and I got through about 15metres. It's made about 74 sausages all together. Excluding the tester.


With both ends knotted the individual links can be twisted in. Nothing fancy for me just a pinch and a few twists to separate the sausages. At this stage you could decide to just coil up the sausage to make the a big cumberland style ring. Or get fiddly and do cocktail sausages.

I went for medium sized chipolatas. Resting them a little in the fridge for a while allows the skin to harden up and the twists to set in place. I'll get them bagged up and in the freezer later tonight.


Naturally they had to be tasted so I fried one up with the left-over sausage meat patties (there's always a bit that doesn't end up in the skin. Fried quite slowly, it stayed together ok with the juice nicely trapped in the skin ready to burst out when cut.

The verdict: I'd have had a bit more salt and pepper, particularly white pepper in them but they are more edible that your supermarket sausage for sure. Juicy and meaty. No added brine, no added rusk just pork.

All my sausage making kit came from http://www.weschenfelder.co.uk/home it's by no means cheap but the sausage maker will outlast me. It's a lovely bit of engineering and built to last.

So now I have a month or so's worth of sausage and mash to satisfy my hankering for Richard's hand pushed sausages. All I need to do to make it better is to keep a few free range pigs...

Risotto

There couldn't be much simpler food but it takes a bit of practice to get it perfect.

First use risotto rice. If you don't you won't achieve the creamy texture that you are looking for.  The good news is it is fairly widely available and you don't need to trek around Italian delis looking for it.


Some folks like to was their rice but I use it straight out of the bag because I want as much starch as possible.


Step 1 is to gently sweat an onion that has been finely chopped in a big heavy frying pan. I don't usually cook in olive oil but it seem right for this dish and I'm not going to get it sizzling hot so it doesn't loose its flavour. If you are adding raw meat put this in early to and let it seal gently.


Then you can add the rice and a knob of butter. The rice swells a lot during cooking so don't go mad. 100gm is a good portion. Stir the rice around until it is well coated with oil and it starts to go a bit pearly.


And now comes the tricky bit. Adding the liquid, which should be either a nice jelly stock or a stock cube. About 500ml of it. Start with 1 ladle of it. Stir the mixture in the pan keeping it on a light boil and making sure it doesn't stick.


When all the liquid is absorbed add another ladleful. Continue cooking, stirring and adding liquid until the rice is getting tender, a half hour or so. Now is the time to add stuff that needs cooking less. I think some peas are an important ingredient. The one in the picture has some chicken and frozen shrimps. Keep stirring, cooking and adding liquid until you get to something that is not quite soup and the rice is tender. Tun up  the heat and add a good knob of butter and stir it in vigorously. Taste a season with salt and pepper.


To serve mould in a bowl and turn on to a plate. It should hold together until it gets to the table but if you bang the plate it collapses.


Finish with some shaved parmesan or piave d'oro snd serve it up.


Some things I know it works with: mussels, mixed seafood, white meat and firm white fish (conger is good.)

Salad Days

Ok your average lettuce, tomato and cucumber concoction is dull. Even a drizzle of oil and a sprinkle of vinegar doesn't do it for me. Loads of salad cream might just make it edible.

On the other hand eating raw stuff is definitely beneficial. And it is summer and it seems to be the thing to do.

The ingredients here are simple. Beetroot, blood orange, cucumber, iceberg and chestnut mushrooms. Cut up or ripped apart in the case of the orange and the lettuce. Not much of a recipe but here are my top salad tips:

• Roll the orange in your hands before you peel it. The skin loosens and the juices are released
• Peel and rip the orange to bits over the rest of the ingredients so you don't loose any juice
• Rip up the lettuce, if you cut it it will go brown at the edges quite quickly
• Cook the beetroots at home if you can get raw ones and use them slightly warm. It really brings out the flavour
• Let all the ingredients get to room temperature if you want to be able to taste them
• Apple and crunchy pear is also good but get it in some lemon juice as soon as it is cut - it will help stop the slices turning brown
• Even palid supermarket tomatoes are improved with a little sugar and fresh basil.
• Pea shoots are fantastic. I'm experimenting with growing some on indoors on paper. Success with be triumphantly reported here. Failure will disappear like tears in the rain.
• If you can't find anything else raisins and sultanas can lift a dull salad
• Honey and plain yoghurt makes a fine dressing - but don't over do it

 I served mine with roast lamb, pasta and fresh pesto.

Squid

Squid can be a bit scary but it's a doddle to prepare if you have a nice sharp knife.

Start by pulling out the bone which looks like a piece of plastic then grip behind the tentacles and tug out the guts with the head. Cut just in front of the eyes, turn the tentacles inside out and pop out the beak and mouth muscles. I like to separate each tentacle.

Now you can sort out the body. Slit it along one side and open it up. You'll find some nasty looking gook that needs to be scraped away. Turn the body skin side up and pull off the purple and black skin. Cut off the flukes.

To help the squid to take the sauce _carefully_ make diagonal cuts about 3mm apart. You'll need a sharp knife, I like to use my Japanese sashimi knife and angle it about 30 degrees. Make another set of fine cuts at right angles.

Cut the body into strips.

Boil a pan of water and throw in the edible bits of meat. Let the water come back to the boil and drain the squids in a colander. Rinse with cold water to prevent over cooking.

Fry off some coarsely sliced onions in plenty of oil add green chilli, a couple of cloves of garlic and grated ginger. I happened to have some shiitake mushrooms that I put in and fried for a couple of minutes. Time to add the squid and black bean sauce.

Let the whole lot sizzle for no more than a minute and serve with rice.

Goes well with Sancere, Muscadet or Entre Deux Mer.

Confit of Duck

Sainsbury's had half price duck legs for sale this week. So I had two packs to turn into Confit de Canard.

The first step is to rub the legs in salt, pepper, thyme, oregano and garlic so they are nicely covered. They will sit like this in the fridge for no more than a day. If you leave them over 24 hours the salt gets too deep into the meat. 18-24 hours is about right to allow some of the flavour in and get some of the moisture out. Tomorrow I'll wipe them down with kitchen roll and cook them for about 2 hours at 200c covered in fat. And by covered I mean fully submerged. I don't want them to roast or fry just sort of stew. By that time they will be falling off the bone.

Before doing anything else with them they stand in the hot fat for at least an hour. More moisture comes out of the meat and is replaced with the cooking juices.

I'm not planning to eat them for a bit so I'm going to be putting them in a large Kilner jar submerged in fat until I'm ready for them. As long as no part of the duck is exposed to the air the fat will preserve them. I've kept them for several months in the fridge, although I'm sure they would be fine in a cool larder or the garage. That is one of the reasons for treating them like this. The ducks would have gone through gavage and killed for the foie gras and this was a good way of keeping the meat. Foie gras ducks are much bigger and fattier than the Gressingham ducks we get over here.

When I am ready to eat them I'll take them out of the fat (keeping it for next time) shake off as much as I can and put them in a frying pan and brown and crisp up both sides. They will be served with potatoes steamed and then browned in the same fat or some garlic mash. The meat is quite rich and a little goes a long way.

I also like to shred the meat of the bones with forks, stir fry it and add the warm meat to crispy salad with a mint and honey dressing. Nothing else needed except warm crusty bread.

Starting to wish I had emptied the shelves. At £2.49 for two legs it's a bit of a bargain...

A bit of campfire cookery.

I've just got back from fine couple of days at Amberley working museum where . Wayne from Forest Knights and I were getting the bowmaking hovel ready for the half term opening. Naturally we had to eat and although the Bridge pub was tempting we cooked over the fire in the shelter.



Wayne usually provides the food but this time I shopped as well. We had been snacking all day on rubbish food (pasties and crisps) and when we came to prepare Wednesday night dinner we had a great choice of things to eat. I decided to go for a lamb gumbo for the main course. I cubed up a few pieces of stewing lamb and fried it off with some onions, green pepper, onions, carrot and a parsnip. When it was nicely browned in went enough water to cover it and a bit more with a vegetable stock cube.

After a few minutes of vigourous boiling it became obvious that the lamb was going to take a little while to get tender enough to be edible and as we were both hungry I fried a couple of mackrel fillets with some spicy chutney and we snacked on them wrapped in flour tortillas while we waited for the stew to cook.

When the lamb was just about cooked I threw in a handful of rice (not quick cook, that is just an insult to rice) and when the stew had thickened around the rice Wayne was worried that we had cooked too much (wouldn't be the first time) but it all went and we rounded off the meal with a desert of Lindt chocolate.

Rice a pasta are great things to take when you are planning to cook outside. They don't take up a lot of room but are satisfying as long as you have something to give them a bit of flavour. They keep pretty well for ever and are a good source of slow release energy.

The next day was also busy and we picked on junk food and endless brews during the day so we were ready for a good dinner by 7pm. A rummage in the food sack came up with a couple of pork chops which were cooked plainly on the griddle and a pork loin which was cut into bite sized medallions and stir fried with broccoli, onions and leeks and served with boiled new potatoes. The flavouring was a citrus and herb rub that Wayne had brought along. Very tasty.

The the leftover potatoes were even better refried with the breakfast bacon in another tortilla wrap with some chutney.

It's a hard life roughing it ;)

And the food fuelled us making the heaviest rustic cupboard door known to man, a quarter sized bow for the display, a bit of primitive blacksmithing with some home made charcoal and shifting soaking wet chipboard panels.

Oh and good luck to whatever animal sneaked to within 4 feet of me during the night and stole the mini scotch eggs. They were truly nasty.

Mr Sinfuls Food Blog

I'll eat pretty well anything. The one thing I have tried that I didn't like to the point it made me retch was Florence Fennel. Maybe it was the way it was prepared but the braised celery texture combined with an overpowering aniseed flavour that numbed my tongue was just too hard to get down. Perhaps I'll give it another try when I get the opportunity.

I tell you this to set the scene for what you might come across on this blog. Anything vaguely edible.

I'm going to kick off with a recipe for what I am planning to prepare this evening. Noodle soup.

Preparing the stock
I cooked Molesey Fried Chicken on Saturday and, as I usually do, I started with a whole chicken and jointed it out. I don't know whether it is my imagination but the collection of joints I manage to get from a small chicken seem much better value than packs of ready jointed chicken and I can make sure the skin is not ripped to pieces. After removing drumsticks, thighs, wings and breast I am left with a carcass which still has a little meat, some skin and all the body bones. I chop this up into managable bits to make my soup stock.

Put it in a heavy pan. No water at this stage. Cover it and put it on a very low heat. The fat will start to come out of it and juices that hit the bottom of the pan will brown. Don't panic. The aim is to get a moderately brown crust on the bottom of the pan. Give it a stir and leave it for a bit longer. It looks like the pan will never be the same again but when you get the water in the browned juices will lift off. The nature of the juices will be changed and the flavour of your finished stock will be more roast chicken than boiled.


Throw in a onion and a couple of cloves of garlic. You could peel and chop them. I don't bother. If there is celery or other veg in the bottom of the fridge that need using they can go in too. Cover again and bring to the boil. Turn the heat down and leave for an hour or until the onion colapses when squashed.

While it is still hot drain off the juice. Leave the fat (schmaltz) on the top. If you have more than about a pint of stock put it back in the pan and boilt it uncovered until it reduces. You can take it down to half a pint if you want to save space in the freezer. Pop it in the fridge or freezer until you are ready for it. The broth is a great culture medium but the fat will harden and seal it off so it can wait for a few days without going mouldy.


When it is cold it will be a jelly. That how it is supposed to be. I leave the seasoning until I come to use it.


Assembling the soup
For my soup I have onions, a piece of savoy cabbage, dried cep, a carrot, and rice stick noodles. The thing to remember is that this is an assembly. If you chuck everything in the stock and boil it up you will end up with something less exciting and homogenous. While the stock is warming up deal with the veg.

Heat a frying pan with some oil. Groundnut is my favourite. Put the thinly shredded cabbage and fried onions in and stir fry them. I'm going to use a few toasted sesame seeds, fish sauce and chilli oil to season them. 

When everything else is ready throw the noodles into some boiling water. Do not over cook them. Do not cook them in the stock. 

Season the stock. I use a shake of mushroom soy and some coconut cream. If you get the solid blocks it lasts for ever and you can chip off as much as you need.

Warm a big bowl. Put the noodles in the bottom and put on a shake of light soy and some sesame oil. Lay the greens alongside. They probably don't need so much seasoning. Pour over the stock.

This is where you can get creative. I like a few grilled tiger prawns and some thinly sliced roast pork on the top. Today I have the cep.

When it is all assembled a drizzle of home made roast chilli oil and a drop of roasted sesame oil on top. A sprinkle of fresh green coriander or parsley is also good.

Chopsticks and a spoon are the best thing to eat with. Forget what you were taught about table manners. Bring the bowl to your mouth and don't be shy about drinking the juice. A delicate slurp when eating the noodles is considered polite in some places.

When you have eaten it reflect on all the carcasses that you have thrown in the bin that could have given you a meal.