Guatemalan Longaniza

Hey, Mom, I finally re-created the sausage you and Dad and I had at that Guatemalan restaurant (aptly named "Guatemalan Restaurant") in Tucson.

The menu, you'll remember, said:

Longaniza: Guatemalan style sausage stuffed with ground pork,

onions, jalapeno peppers, mint and spices.

The sausage was grilled over hot coals, almost blackened in some places but never burnt. It was stuffed in hog casings that the chef split open prior to grilling. The pork was quite lean and finely ground for sausage. The mint and chiles were fresh and abundant. It was like nothing I'd had before.

So I looked for a recipe. And it turns out this post is destined to become the top search result for the phrase "Guatemalan longaniza," simply because I couldn't find any such thing anywhere on the internet or in any of my cookbooks. There's Spanish longaniza, which is smoked and mint-free. There's Mexican longaniza, which appears to be like Mexican chorizo except in casings (look, a video from Arizona on Mexican sausagemaking in which the narrator has a Castilian accent. Seriously, listen to the Spanish version. Where did they find that guy?)

And there's Filipino longaniza, which is garlicky, spicy, sometimes sweet, and occasionally contains mint.

But no Guatemalan longaniza. I wonder if the chef, the older woman at that restaurant, has connections or family in the Philippines? Maybe there's a Filipino community in Guatemala? You'll have to do further investigative work for me, I'm afraid.

Anyway, I bought a Boston butt on sale at Publix and cut the meat off the bone. I used about three pounds of meat and froze the rest. I decided not to add any fat as I usually would for sausage: the butt was quite fatty already, and I wanted to keep it lean like what we had.

So I mixed the following together and sent it through my grinder fitted with the finer of the two blades:

• 3 pounds fatty pork, cut into strips
• a white onion, diced and sauteed in olive oil
• a clove of garlic, minced and added to saute pan at end
  
• a handful of fresh mint
• a jalapeno from the grocery store
• a few tabascos from last year's garden, frozen, since grocery store jalapenos are so lame
• red pepper flakes to round up the chile flavor
  
• kosher salt
• black pepper (lots)
  
• fresh thyme (not much)
  
• 1/3 cup light rum

I also separately chiffonaded another handful of mint and mixed it in after the grinding, since the grind was so fine and I wanted some visible mint leaves.

But it wasn't quite right. I put the mixture in the fridge and thought about it for a whole day...and finally realized the secret ingredient had to be a good dose of sugar. That would account for the scorched look of the restaurant sausages where the filling had burbled out of the slits. And it worked: it pulled the mint and spices together in a very Vietnamese way.

So I added:

• several tablespoonfuls of sugar

In fact, Lawson's first comment on the sausages (which he liked) was that they reminded him of the Chinese sweet sausages he used to eat in NYC and at The Orient, the Chinese restaurant in Columbia where he learned much of what he knows about Chinese cooking.

Next time I think I will add lime or orange zest or juice, just a touch. I may also play with some other spices besides thyme and pepper.

I stuffed these into medium hog casings, tied them into 5" links, and hung them in the fridge for two days. I used the gas grill to cook them the first batch, but I will grill them over wood next time. I have been enjoying my homemade sausages grilled over wood so, so, so much more than over gas. The wood seems to fill in the flavor gaps and mellow any dominant flavors -- like, my bratwurst over gas taste too strongly of nutmeg, but over wood they have the right musky, earthy-homemade nutmeg solidity but don't necessarily taste like snickerdoodles.

The longaniza was good. I'll make it again -- it's a very summery sausage.

I have sausages and pork on the brain after interviewing local food activist, politician, and fancypants pig farmer Emile DeFelice a few days ago for an upcoming Free Times story. We foraged for mushrooms (well, as much as my inappropriate footwear would allow). Fangirl and journalist struggled mightily within me. Fortunately, the best defense against asking questions like "How'd you get so awesome?" is to ask as few questions as possible and just let a guy talk. (Actually, that's pretty much my one and only interview tactic: Shut the hell up.) Look for the article on Wednesday.

No good sausage or Emile pictures, sorry. My camera woes continue.

Deer Sausage and Mushroom Gravy

My friend Dave gave us some venison that his cousin shot and took to a processor. Item #1 was this entertainingly packaged sausage.

It looks like something you would buy from under the table at a flea market, but it is very tasty. It's seasoned like standard American breakfast sausage -- black pepper, sage, salt, red chile flakes -- and is well balanced in a way that highlights the dark, sweet deer flavor.

Item #2, unfortunately -- and Dave warned me about this -- is a packet of square patties with some kind of seasoning added such that they taste very much like fast food chicken sandwiches. They are quite alarming. The meat is too finely ground and the seasonings oddly chemical. They taste nothing like deer. They are nearly inedible.

I put some of the sausage to good use for a recent dinner. I made two sausage patties and browned them and set them aside -- they were probably medium rare at that point, but they cooked a little more in the sauce at the end.


I then used the same pan with a little extra olive oil to saute onions, garlic, shitake mushrooms, and cremini mushrooms. Then I added vermouth or maybe leftover Riesling and scraped up the pan goop left over from the sausage. There was a lot of it -- very effective. I added chicken broth, fresh sage, and thyme, and let the whole thing simmer a bit.

I thickened it slightly with cornstarch, which made for a nice glossy brown sauce.

At the end I added a bunch of parsley and reheated the sausage patties in the sauce. I served it over polenta/grits...I think I called it polenta that night.

Calzone II

Here's another calzone, this one much more traditional. The filling was homemade Italian sausage, sauteed onions and garlic, ricotta, mozzarella, and parsley. I added some fresh thyme and dried oregano too, I think.

I have a sinus infection and am not doing much cooking, which is why I'm writing about food from a week or two back and don't remember exactly what I did. Makes for poor food blogging, I know. But the calzones are lovely, aren't they?

Italian Sausage

For Christmas a few years ago, Lawson gave me a grinder attachment for my KitchenAid. This year, he gave me the sausage horn attachment, a hank of hog casings, and a book on sausage-making. So I was finally all set to make sausage.

The grinder is funny: I tried it for cranberry-orange relish last year, but it was no good -- it made the relish too wet and gooey, and I ended up using my hand cranked old metal grinder from the flea market instead. But for meat, the grinder was perfect. I used the coarser grind plate, and everything went quickly and smoothly.

Italian sausage recipes are surprisingly simple and similar to each other. This was roughly what I used:

3.5 pounds of pork butt, cut off the bone
1 pound of fatback
2 tablespoons fennel seeds
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon pepper
kosher salt
1 tablespoon red chile powder
1 tablespoon red pepper flakes
1/4 cup vermouth

I used too much salt at first and had to go buy another pound of lean pork to grind in. I used the amount of salt called for in the main recipe I was following, 4 teaspoons, but it turned out the fatback was salted, and it threw everything off.

I fried up several little samples of the sausage throughout the process to make sure everything was tasting right.

So I ground everything together and put it back in the fridge. I would have liked to have stuffed it that day but had to wait another day, and the meat got kind of stiff and hard to stuff.

I rinsed out four casings by putting them over the faucet and running water through them.


To stuff a sausage, I had to thread an entire casing, all three or four feet of it, onto the sausage horn, which was attached to the grinder with its plate and knife removed. I then started piling meat into the hopper and pushing it down with a little wooden stomper. Once the initial air was pushed out and there was an inch of meat in the casing, I tied the end of the sausage and started stuffing.

It took a long time, and quite a bit of skill and feel. My sausages were passable, but they weren't all that pretty. I would stuff each casing full, then section it off and twirl the sausages to seal them into links. I set them in the fridge overnight to cure, then packed them in freezer bags.

They taste a little salty still, and a little lean -- that extra pound of meat I had to add upset the balance a bit. They could have used more fennel, too. But they are delicious. We grilled a few the first night. I froze the rest. We took some to the mountains this weekend and made pasta with tomatoes, red pepper, onions, and sausage.
All very good.

Next time I'll try something I can smoke, like andouille. And I want to perfect the Italian sausage recipe.

Pizza Again, with Chiles

I made a few pizzas the other night. Same crust recipe as I've been using for the last two years, though I got away from it for a while -- I kept making my pizza doughs as wet as my bread doughs, and they just weren't holding together. I also had some not-so-delicious over-risings and one or two mediocre batches with spelt flour. So I'm pleased to report that my pizza-fu is back.

This one had hot Italian sausage, red bell peppers, and onions, all pre-sauteed; plain tomato sauce from a jar; mozzarella; and parmesan. You can see the little shaved thin pieces of parmesan in the picture.

I also made a delicious pie with homemade pesto and fresh tomatoes and mozzarella, but it didn't photograph so well.

I know I post pictures of garden chiles all the time, but they're so pretty that I can't help it. And they are the perfect pizza accompaniment. Here we have ordoños (the purple and small yellow), chiltepins (the tiny green and orange balls), a Thai chile (the wrinkly tall red one), dedo di moças (the big glossy orange and green ones), and tabascos (the bigger yellow and the red at the bottom right. Whew.

This is how you eat fresh chiles, in case you are wondering how I consume all these fiery peppers without doing myself physical harm.

French Chili

This was reminiscent of the old chili my mother made with a pound of hamburger, a can of red kidney beans, and a can of tomato soup.

I browned some of the wonderful little French Bistro sausages you sent for Christmas, along with some onions and garlic. Then I added a can of cannelini beans, half a can of tomatoes, and a little water. I seasoned with salt, pepper, and fresh parsley and thyme and simmered for a half hour. It was a perfect casual winter supper. I served it with a green bean and tomato salad and garlic bread.

White Bean, Sausage, and Vegetable Soup

I celebrated the impending expiration of my Cooks Illustrated subscription by actually preparing something from the magazine. Usually I just skim the articles, think "Hmm, if I ever want to make classic American lasagna, I guess I'll read this more carefully," and add the issue to the stack on the back of the toilet. Like any magazine, the first few issues were exciting, after which they quickly got old, because as it turns out I don't really cook things like mashed potatoes and yellow cake.

This recipe was part of an extended discourse on cooking the perfect white beans. I tried their method, which involved soaking the beans in salted water, but detected no difference from my usual bean soaking (or, often, not-soaking) methods. And, needless to say, I changed the soup recipe a bit. You could make a perfectly wonderful version without reading the article, simply by compiling the following into a soup using normal methods of soup compilation: a pound of soaked white beans; a pound of sausage; onions, carrots, turnips, and celery; water; a pound of diced tomatoes; fresh sage, fresh rosemary, bay leaves, and lots of black pepper.

Pasta with Italian Sausage

No, we didn't eat the dog. We adopted her, and that's why I haven't posted much this week. I've been exhausted and, I'm sorry to say, eating nothing very interesting -- pizza from our local Greek pizza joint; lettuce with salad dressing and nuts; cereal; grilled cheese sandwiches. I'm ready to get back to cooking more.

A few nights ago, though, I made a pasta sauce with Italian sausage, red peppers, onions, oregano, basil, and tomatoes. On Lawson's recommendation I added fennel seeds, some dried red peppers, and parsley. It was good. I love sausage because I love the idea of meat as seasoning rather than giant chunk of main ingredient.

Durum

That’s semolina to you. Grandpa’s grain elevator in North Dakota in the 1940s through the 1960s dealt with “spring wheat” and “winter wheat,” along with rye, flax, oats, soybeans, and corn. Spring wheat was usually the hard durum variety which is especially prized for pasta.

The reason I’m bringing this up is: we had a nostalgic dish tonight that was one of the first things I learned to cook as a 20-year-old bride. I picked up a free recipe pamphlet from the North Dakota State Fair published by the Durum Council of America, and it has recipes I still use for macaroni and cheese, sausage and macaroni casserole, spaghetti with meatballs, and other hearty and unfashionable things. The pamphlet recipes are professionally written and edited. Although it’s from the sixties, there is no cream of mushroom soup in evidence, and in fact the only processed ingredients are canned tomatoes and mushrooms. Fat is everywhere, but the use of salt is reasonable. This has the bonus of being a one-pot meal that can be cooked on a camp stove.

Here’s the original recipe. Of course I now modify it to use less meat, light sour cream, no sugar, more spices, and so forth.

Mexican Macaroni Sausage Casserole (as opposed to my regular vegetarian one)

1 pound pork sausage
¾ cup diced onion
¾ cup chopped green pepper
1 large can (1 pound 13 ounces) tomatoes
2 cups sour cream
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon chile powder
1 teaspoon salt
8 ounces elbow macaroni

In large skillet, brown sausage, onion, and green pepper. Drain off excess fat. Stir in tomatoes, sour cream, sugar, chili powder, and salt. Add macaroni. Cover skillet and simmer about 30 minutes, or until macaroni is tender.

Oh, and here’s a fun web page:

http://www.northern-crops.com/technical/introdurum.pdf