I went down to Salem to make sausage with my friend Daryl. Daryl earns his keep as a caterer (he and his wife Leslie own Loustic Catering in Salem), but we started making sausage together before he got back to cooking professionally. He's catering a big Superbowl party and we used the sausage making as an excuse to get together.
We made four kinds of sausage yesterday, two with pork and one each with lamb and chicken. We've developed a couple of our own recipes over the years but all four of these were from Polcyn and Ruhlman's book "Charcuterie".There are several things I enjoy about sausage making; first and foremost is getting together with a friend, but beyond that is the ability to control the ingredients and tweak the flavors to our own tastes.
The breakfast sausage recipe needed a bunch of tweaking after tasting a bit - we added more sage, a bit of nutmeg and a bunch of red pepper flakes. I had some this morning for breakfast and the seasoning was all good except for too much garlic! I'm not a garlic fan first thing in the morning. We've got our own recipe for breakfast sausage that I much prefer. The one thing I did get from this recipe is how much fresh ginger you can put in and not have it dominate the flavor. I'm going to add more ginger to our breakfast sausage recipe the next time I make it.
The other pork sausage we made was the Sweet Italian Sausage. I've been told that traditional Sweet Italian Sausage has no garlic in it. This has plenty! It makes a very flavorful sausage that is great grilled or used in spaghetti sauce or in a lasagna.
We made a lamb and rosemary sausage the was chock full of rosemary. I'm really looking forward to throwing some of these on the grill when it warms up. I think this sausage would really pair well with a Zinfandel, Southern Rhone wine or a jammy Las Rochas Garnacha.
The final sausage we made was a chicken sausage with roasted garlic and oregano. I have to say I'm not usually a fan of chicken sausage, but this one turned out pretty well. The original recipe called for duck and substituting chicken was just the first of many deviations we made from the recipe as written. The final result bore little resemblance to th e original. We had some left over and were throwing some ideas around about how to use it and we came up with using stuffing a chicken breast with it, wrapping it in prosciutto and baking it or using it as a stuffing for mushroom caps. You could serve the stuffed mushroom caps with a lighter Pinot Noir or a Sauvignon Blanc and it would be pretty tasty.
I'm not much of a beer drinker, but I thought an earthy Belgian Ale would be good with these chicken sausages. I need to see if I can get a couple of more bottles of Gilgamesh Cranberry Saison - the tart cranberry component and lack of hops makes this beer easier for me to match with food (their Hopscotch Scottish Ale is also very good). It's a seasonal product and they don't yet have wide distribution, but if you live in the Salem or Portland area you may be able to arrange for a delivery by contacting the folks on the website.Daryl threw together a wonderful bright squash soup for lunch. He served it up with a tossed salad with a miso vinaigrette (I need to get the recipe!) and a really good bottle of 2007 Bethel Height's Gewurztraminer. I have to say that it is the best American made Gewurtz I've ever had - I might have mistaken it for an Alsatian version if I hadn't seen the label.
I brought home some of the left over soup and had it for dinner last night. It was so good I decided to make it again today. It's equally good on a warm, bright day (Yang) or a cold dark day (Yin). Daryl used Sweet Meat Squash and the soup was canary yellow. I used a couple of small Kobucha squash and the soup has a much oranger hue. I think you could probably make this with carrots or sweet potatoes and it would be pretty darn good.
Daryl's Yin Yang Winter Squash Soup - I'm drinking cheap TJ's dry sherry with this as I type!
4 cups Winter Squash - peeled and cut in to large chunks
4 cups chicken broth - homemade if you've got it
4 large cloves of minced garlic
4 T minced ginger
1 cup cream, half and half or milk - of course it will be richer if you've got cream, but you suit yourself.
Throw the squash, broth, ginger and garlic in a pot and cook until the squash is tender
Blend it with a stick blender or in batches in a blender.
Add the dairy and warm it up if necessary.
Add salt to taste if necessary.
A follow up to a cocktail recipe I posted a couple of weeks ago
Modified Lion's Tail
• 2 ½ oz. Bourbon Whiskey
• ½ oz. Allspice Dram
• ¾ oz. Fresh Lemon Juice
• 2 dashes Angostura Bitters
Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker, fill with ice and serve.
I find this is more to my liking than the original and very tasty original recipe posted below. I like the match of the lemon with the vanilla notes of the bourbon and with the lower acidity of the lemon, the additional simple syrup isn't needed.
• 2 oz. Bourbon Whiskey
• ½ oz. to ¾ oz. Allspice Dram
• ½ oz. Fresh Lime Juice
• ½ spoonful of Simple Syrup
• 2 dashes Angostura Bitters
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That sweet Italian sausage sounds yummy. It sounds like something that would go great with Garnacha, which is my favorite thing to pair with Italian fare. Usually, the standard Italian table wine is Chianti, which doesn't have the intense tannins of Merlot or other reds, but I've found that Garnachas, including Las Rocas, work perfectly with Italian dishes and meats. If you can get over the apparent gaucheness of drinking a Spanish wine with Italian food it's a great combination, especially if the courses include salami or Caesar salad.
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