My Sausage-Making Adventure Begins February 1, 2009
Posted by pinchaque in 101 Things, Cooking, Food.Tags: lard, pork, sausage
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Sausage Ingredients and Recipe
Breakfast Sausage. It’s not just a good way to begin the day, but also a good way to begin my sausage-making career. Or so says my Home Sausage Making book.
I think my desire to make sausage came out of trips to The Linkery, a San Diego restaurant that specializes in having local, fresh, ingredients. While the food there is generally good (despite the small portions and sometimes questionable service), what really has stood out to me are the sausages: every one I’ve had there has been excellent, with my favorite being the Kasekrainer in all its cheesy-spicy glory. (As an aside, perhaps the Linkery should open a new restaurant that really does focus on its namesake.)
My first step on the path to Kasekrainer home reproduction is to follow the beginning sausage recipe in the book: Breakfast Sausage. Not knowing where I could source intestines locally, I turned to The Sausage Source on the internets. There I found sheep casings (smaller, used for breakfast sausage), hog casings (larger, for italian sausage), and curing salts (needed for pepperoni).
I knew exactly where to find the pork butt and lard: Northgate Gonzalez Market! This is an Hispanic grocery store in San Diego (“south of the 94″) that has an awesome meat counter with an appetite-inspiring panoply of pork products.
Cubed Pork and Lard with Spices
The sausage adventure began auspiciously enough with breaking down the pork into 3/4″ chunks. About 20% of the sausage is the lard, also cut into chunks. These are then frozen so they maintain their texture through the grinding process. I got out about 4 feet of sheep casing use. The casing is packed in salt to keep it “fresh”, and taking it out caused a blizzard of intestine-scented salt to overtake the counter. Yummy.
Initial Grinding of Sausage Meat
The initial grinding went well, as did the spicing of the sausage. Of course it was a bit messy mixing it all together.
Mixing Spices into the Sausage
The process really slowed down on the second griding, because the sausage mixture was so finely ground that it stuck to everything, including the tool I was using to push it into the grinder.
After that I had to figure out how to open up the casings and slide them over the stuffing shoot. This was at once tricky, slimey, and smelly.
Slipping the Intestines onto the Sausage Stuffer
Once that was done then the stuffing began. Amanda helped hold the links as I operated the Kitchenaid. It also went slow at first because of the stickiness of the mixture. But once I got angry and started shoving things into the machine with more force then it was smooth sailing.
The Start of the Links
Finished Sausage (Looks Like a Snake)
Most of the way through I ran out of casings. This is because I failed to realize that 4 feet of casings from the package will make less than 4 feet of links because when it expands to accept the meat then it shrinks in length. Oh well! Then I ended up with some sausage patties.
Sausage Twisted Into Links
I twisted the sausage into links, which caused a couple of them to burst. Then I cut the twist points which caused further leakage from the end of the links (contrary to what I was led to believe by my trusty book!).
Sausage: The Finished Product
But none of that matters because the taste was excellent. We made breakfast tacos with the sausage to start things off. It had a great rich flavor. The spicing was perhaps too heavy–I had used a heavy hand when making the sausage because I was worried it wasn’t enough, but this was one place where I should have followed the recipe.
This past weekend we also had breakfast sausage in a more traditional setting, alongside eggs and english muffins. That was also excellent, and portends well for my future sausagemaking endeavors.
And what might those be you may ask? Well I’m gearing up for my fully homemade pizza, which would include italian sausage and pepperoni. Pepperoni needs to age in the fridge for months, so Amanda will love that. Lard and intestines have never brought me so much joy…
Stuffed Pizza and UK Lagers January 18, 2009
Posted by pinchaque in 101 Things, Adventures in Beer, Cooking, Food.Tags: 101things, beer, lagers, pizza, stuffed pizza
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Pizza stuffing components
The time had arrived to topple another food challenge from my 101 things list: Stuffed Pizza. I think stuffed pizza has a sort of mystique. That might be because it’s different than your average pizza–not every restaurant does it. And those that do seem to have a long wait for tables and for baking. Lefty’s Chicago Pizzeria here in San Diego does a great job. Our first trip there we called ahead for pick-up since the pizza takes an hour to cook. We got a large Monster of the Midway, which fed the two of us for a few days. You have one slice and you’re stuffed! Much different than thin-crust pizzas, where you can eat half a pizza and still crave more.
Anyway my stuffed pizza began with the James McNair Pizza book recipe, which I’ve used before for standard pizza. For stuffing I went with our favorites to give a great chance for success: Italian sausage, roasted garlic, jalapenos, onion, bell pepper, and pepperoni. I didn’t put any sauce in — just canned diced tomatoes, drained and tossed with salt and Italian herbs. For cheese I used whole milk mozzarella.
Stuffed pizza before baking
I used a springform pan for the pizza, oiled it up, and put the dough in. About 2/3 of the dough was used for the bottom crust, bringing it most of the way up the sides. Inside went the cheese, toppings, tomatoes, and more cheese. After putting the top dough on, I pinched the dough together to seal, sliced the top to let air escape, and brushed the top with olive oil (reserved from the roasted garlic).
Stuffed pizza after baking
It took about 40 minutes total to bake, starting out at 475 and then lowering when the crust browned quickly. The crust sealing came undone in some places, but not fatally so. Getting the pie out of the pan was easy thanks to all that olive oil.
Slices of my stuffed pizza
After letting it sit for a few minutes, I cut it using a chef’s knife. The crust was a little tough, so that made cutting difficult. But it tasted awesome, and the flavors blended together perfectly. The parmesan cheese didn’t stick on top very well, so next time I may try the variation that puts the tomatoes on top of the whole pie.
UK and Italy Lagers
Is there a better companion for stuffed pizza than beer? How about cheap lagers from the UK, ex-UK, and Italy? That’s right, it was also time for another round of my world beer challenge! I had high hopes for Harp and low expectations for Fosters (Australian for “beer”), but blind tasting waved its magic wand yet again.
Lagers in their assigned glasses
Peroni was just plain disgusting, so that was dead last. All the others were pretty good! Steinlager had a rich flavor, but some unwelcome bitterness. Herp, Moretti, and Fosters were all pretty close, but in the end here were the results:
- Fosters – Australia
- Birra Moretti – Italy
- Harp – Ireland
- Steinlager – New Zealand
- Peroni – Italy
In a surprise move, Fosters takes the win and moves on to the final round! Only two groups are left to go: Asia and Germany.
Traditional Christmas Meal: Baby Back Ribs January 11, 2009
Posted by pinchaque in 101 Things, Cooking, Food.Tags: 101things, christmas, Cooking, redsage
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Baby Back Ribs and Corn Sticks
Just a quick post to catch up on our Christmas meal, which furthered my Red Sage Cookthrough efforts. Our Christmas meals typically involve elaborate cooking, which usually means the meat is still on the bone. A favorite in years past has been rack of lamb, but this year’s critter of choice was the pig, and the succulent back ribs contained therein.
Our Christmas meal thus consisted of:
- Glazed Pork Baby Back Ribs and Black Coffee-Guajillo Barbecue Sauce
- Silver Queen Corn Sticks
The corn sticks were made by special guest chef, Amanda the Baking Queen. They turned out quite well–moist, with great corn flavor.
My typical method of cooking ribs is taken from Joy of Cooking: bake them, covered, in a mixture of BBQ sauce and orange juice for around 3 hours at 300 deg, and then grill them to finish. This consistently produces very tender and delicious ribs for me.
The Red Sage recipe for uses a dry-bake method, so I was initially worried that they wouldn’t be tender. They weren’t quite as tender as my usual method, but were still tender. The sauce was the weird part for me. The glaze and sauce both included a lot of vineagar, which I’m not very fond of to begin with. The flavor mostly boiled out, but the sauce did end up moderately astringent. I prefer a sweeter sauce, so I think next time I would cut back on the vineagar and add more brown sugar. However, the coffee and chile flavor really came through and made it quite enjoyable.
