Sausages!

I don't think I've mentioned Radishes before--a couple of years ago, some of my foodie friends decided to create a group dedicated to the learning, the cooking and, of course, the eating of different foods.  We meet every other month and there are two basic rules:  there is always a theme which the food or beverage must fit and the dish(es) must be homemade.  Most of our themes have centered around regional cuisines; Russian, Scottish, North African, and so forth.  A couple of times we went with a general topic; comfort food, picnic, you get the idea.  The results have been extraordinary--not only is the food enjoyable, but I find it fun to discover a little about the chosen region and its traditional ingredients.  This month we are meeting at a beach park and the theme is "Sausages 'n Stuff". 

I am ridiculously proud of myself.  I made sausages today; as in, ground, spiced meat, stuffed into pig intestines.  I have no idea how they taste but they look pretty nifty and the sausage stuffer I bought worked like a charm.  I love when things work the way they are supposed to! I started with two basic sausage recipes--one is pork with fresh parsley, sage and maple syrup and the other is pork with brown sugar and a bit of cayenne pepper.

Fresh parsley and sage, maple syrup

 I refrigerated the sausage mixtures for a while and then put the hog casings in warm water to soak--I didn't know how many of the casings I would need and I didn't realize how many were in the package.  Unfortunately, I had to toss the ones I didn't use.

They kind of look like kanpyo...

The casings were very thin and fragile looking but they were surprisingly easy to work with and none of our sausages burst.  C, who acted as my sous chef, said he, for one, was glad to know that intestines don't burst as easily as I had anticipated.  I see his point.  

The stuffer is pretty much like a caulking gun

I loaded the first batch of sausage mixture into the tube and snapped the stuffing nozzle onto the front of the gun.  C screwed the tube onto the handle and we were ready for the casing.

Yes, we both chuckled over the fact that it looked a lot like putting on a condom...

Once the casing was threaded onto the nozzle, C started pumping the trigger and despite the simple mechanism, the meat flowed out in a fairly steady stream.

It took a little practice to get the sausage nice and even.

We had 4 pounds of pork mixture and used 6 casings.  It was a fairly easy process but we definitely had our system down pat by the last sausage.

Definitely need two pairs of hands.

When each sausage was completed, I squeezed out as much air as possible and even used a pin here and there so there wouldn't be any bubbles.  Then I twisted the long piece into links.

Sometimes I forgot which way to turn the next one--they need to alternate.

The final product looked much more professional than I had hoped for.  The sausage stuffer wasn't too complicated to clean but I will definitely buy a bottle brush for the tube.  

Sure hope they taste good!

The real test comes tomorrow when we grill these babies and serve them up to our friends.  Hope it's a happy Sausage Saturday!

The Endless Food Summer

So a couple of people have asked me if I had given up on my Food Summer.  The answer is definitely not!  It's just that it occurred to me that writing about taste-testing recipes was growing monotonous and if I was having a hard time writing' em, well, my extremely small group of readers probably didn't want to read 'em either. Henceforth, I will only blog about my recipe tests when I have hit upon one that is worth writing about. Here's a couple of them.

Last week, T and I made Apple Pie Bars. And they are sooooo worth writing about.  My family loves pies and this one looked interesting; basically it is apple pie for a group larger than 8:

Tangy apple filling encased by two flaky, buttery crusts...it's a pie lover's dream.  I liked the fact that the pie crust was pretty easy to work.  Our humidity does cruel and frustrating things to pie crust so having this one roll out smoothly then peel off the waxed paper neatly was a huge, huge bonus.  The flakiness of the crust was incredibly rewarding for a frustrated pastry cook like me.

We cut the pie into bars as the recipe suggested.  They sure didn't last long--all the bars were gone by the next day.  Another bonus--refrigeration didn't make the crust soggy!  Definitely a make-again recipe!

Tonight I decided to make shrimp and grits.  Except I didn't have shrimp, I had slipper lobster.  The only thing I missed about the shrimp is its pretty pink color when cooked.  Slipper lobster is rather bland-looking by comparison, but the taste more than made up for it!  Nothing that bacon, garlic and onion can't fix!

The grits were a really nice change.  I told E that I could see why farming families ate it--it is so economical and so filling.  I love that it is such a versatile vehicle for all kind of flavors and toppings.  I put cheddar cheese in my grits so they could definitely have been a side dish in and of themselves:

The farmer's market at Windward Mall sells Nalo Farms' greens--I bought two big bags of baby kale for $5.50 each and a smaller bag of Swiss chard.  The kale went into a pot with seasonings and smoked turkey legs.  They were a great accompaniment to the grits dish:

Hmmm--not highly attractive on the plate perhaps, but they were an awesome meal.  A said she thinks I am actually a closet Southerner.  I'll take the regional foods but they can keep their weather; they have even more humidity than we do! ;-)