Dateline: August 2-4, 2020 Merguez Sausage

I bought 2 small lamb shoulder roasts, about 2 lbs each, from FreshDirect to make lamb merguez sausage.

The recipe was from Home Sausage Making, Cathy Barrow's merguez recipe.  I can't export the recipe to this blog, but I will type it up.

Ingredients

20 ft lamb casing, or 10 ft medium hog casing

4 lbs boneless lamb shoulder

1 lb pork fat (I used beef fat)

8 cloves of garlic, minced

3 T kosher salt

2 T paprika

1 T dried oregano

2 t ground coriander

2 t ground cumin

2 t anise seed

2 t ground cinnamon

2 t cayenne pepper

1.5 t ground black pepper

1/4 c red wine (I used white with a splash of red wine vinegar)

1/4 c water

Method

1.  Prepare the casings by soaking in warm water with a splash of vinegar and rinsing.

2.  Cube up lamb and fat in 1 in. cubes and sprinkle with all spices except wine and water.  Mix well and refrigerate for minimum 2 hours, or preferably overnight.

3.  Grind through small disk.

4.  Add water and wine and mix well with your clean hands until it is a little sticky.  (This is developing the bind.)

5.  Stuff into your casings.  You can make 10 in lengths, or like I did, large coils.  Tie off the ends, and prick any air bubbles.

6.  Place sausage on a rack in a baking pan and refrigerate uncovered overnight.

7.  If you made links, but them apart.  The sausage can be refrigerated for 2 - 3 days, or frozen for up to 3 months.  Thaw in refrigerator overnight before using frozen sausage.

8.  Cook using the method of your choice, to an internal temperature of 160° F

Ground meat ready to be cased

Lamb merguez waiting to cure in fridge overnight

Full disclosure, I forgot to put in the garlic.  Even without the vampire repelling ingredient, these were excellent sausages.  I will definitely make them again and again!

How did I use the sausages

I could not grill them because the remnants of Isaias were barreling through Brooklyn.  So I pulled out the instant pot, 2 cans of garbanzo beans and some collards and this is what I came up with.

1 lb merguez sausages

2 Cans garbanzo beans

1 bunch collard greens, stripped off of stem and julienned

3 scallions, sliced thin, held aside

1 red onion, diced

3 cloves of garlic, smashed and chopped

2 roma tomatoes, halved, seeds squeezed out and diced

1 cup chicken stock

1/2 t ground cumin

1/2 t ground coriander

1/4 t ground cinnamon

1/4 ground cloves

1/4 t tumeric

1 t chili pepper of your choice, I used alleppo

1 large handful mint, chopped 

1 large handful parsley, chopped

1/2 lime, juiced

1 t ground sumac berries

1.5 t kosher salt

avocado oil

flaky salt to finish

~1 T oil sausages were cooked in to finish

Method

1.  Drain and rinse chick peas.

2.  Heat InstantPot on saute on medium heat level.  When hot, add avocado oil, red onion and garlic.  Saute until fragrant.

3.  Add cumin, coriander, cinnamon, cloves, and tumeric and saute to bloom the spices.  Add beans and chicken stock mix well.  Add collard greens.  Mix well.

4.  Add kosher salt, chili pepper, and chopped tomatoes.  Mix well, taste and correct seasonings, if necessary.

5.  When collards are softened and cooked, add parsley, and lime juice.  Mix well, taste and correct seasonings, if necessary.

6.   Heat a large pan with lid that can hold the sausages in one layer over high heat.  Add small amount of oil of your choice.  When the oil shimmers, add sausages, reduce temperature, and cover with a lid.  When sausages are browned on one side, carefully turn over and brown other side.  You can add a couple of ounces of water to steam the sausages after flipping.  Cook until water has evaporated and second side is nicely browned.  Use an instant thermometer to check that temp is at least 160 F.  

7.  Remove sausages, add some of the oil to the beans.  Mix well.  Taste and finish with flaky salt, reserved scallions, mint, and sumac.

Even without garlic, these were excellent sausages

 

This was far better than you would think.  The beans and collards blended together perfectly and the "sauce" clung to everything.  The mint added a nice brightness, but got overshadowed by spices after a while.

Dateline: August 2, 2020 Had a Hankering for Pasta, Found the Perfect Recipe

I had a bunch of cherry tomatoes, gobs of mint and a hankering for pasta.  As I was perusing the NYT Cooking App, I saw Melissa Clark's "Pasta with Burst Cherry Tomatoes"

This is a gem of pasta dish.  Everything was on hand or in the freezer, pasta, pancetta, tomatoes, ricotta, scallions, garlic, and mint.  The dish is easy, quick and so tasty.  Strangely enough, I did not vary from the written recipe.  So glad I did not.  Both Bill and I were very pleased with the results and it will go into regular rotation.

Here the sauce is being created, after the pancetta has rendered its fat, remove to a dish lined with paper towels.  Then add garlic, hot pepper flakes, salt, and pepper and cook until fragrant.  Add tomatoes and cook until they are collapsing.  I threw in the largest slices of scallion after the tomatoes had burst.  Drain and add pasta, some pasta cooking water, if it looks dry, I used about 3 T, and finish cooking the pasta.  Add the mint and scallions.  Lower the heat, mixing until the mint has wilted.  

Dress with a drizzle more of oil, and flaky salt.  Plate and add a dollop of ricotta on top.  

Enjoy!  It really is a true winner!  I could see swapping out the mint for basil but the mint was not overpowering, it was just a slight hint in the background.  Yummers!

Dateline: July 25, 2020 Kielbasa, Cheese, Grilled Salmon, Asparagus, Broccoli, Salad, Fruit Salad, and Guacamole

So, sometimes things are just too darn weird for words.  I got an order from FreshDirect this morning, Bill went down to fetch it.  When he came back into the house, he said, "wow that's sure is a lot of avocados!"  I respond, "I didn't order any avocados".  I checked my order, and yup, that was true.  I did not order any.  I have accidentally added items before, and been surprised to see 15 jars of oil pack tuna.  However, this was not the case.  There were over 50 2-pack boxes of avocados, ready to eat just sitting in their own FD bag.  I assumed that they were meant for a restaurant or other business.  That was about $250 worth of alligator pears!

I called customer service, and said what was sitting on my kitchen floor, after the rep stopped laughing, she said, "let me check to make sure you weren't charged."  I was not.  She asked me to hold while she was trying to figure out where they should have been delivered.  Humming quietly to myself.  She came back on and said, "where are the avocados now?"  "In my apt", I respond.  "Oh, throw them away.  We can not take them back, they have gone inside.  If you were on the street, we could have had the truck come and pick them up.  But because they have been inside your building, we can not accept them.  Eat them, give them away, throw them out, you can do what ever you want with them."

So, 47 boxes of avocados went downstairs to the staff, and any neighbors who want them, and I kept 3 boxes.  This is why we are having guac!

You can't make this stuff up!

Everything for dinner will be grilled, except cheeses, salads, and guac.  I have prepped all the veggies, salads, and solids that go in the guac already.  So when Servet gets here, we can get down to the serious business of deciding what to drink and enjoying the glorious weather on the deck.  When we decide we want to eat, out come the fixings, and voila, stuff is ready to throw on the grill, or throw into a bowl, etc.

I kind of like having everything prepped and ready to roll.  Allows me to relax and enjoy the rest of the day.

With everything prepped, cooking went one-two-three and done, however, I forgot to take any photos.  Sigh, one margarita with a muddle of mint and salt and I can't remember what to do!

I seasoned the salmon with only salt and pepper on all sides and some cooking spray.  The grill was screaming hot after cooking the veggies, so the fish and kielbasa cooked quickly.  The fish was quite tasty, skin nicely crisped up and a beautiful medium doneness.  

The fruit salad didn't get eaten for dessert as we were too full from the guac and ezme that Servet made.  Ohhhh that was delicious.  He is going to send me the recipe.  Ezme is a Turkish finely chopped spicy vegetable salad.  I order it from a local Turkish take out and love it.  It's the freshness of the veggies and the spiciness of the added condiment that is addictive.  I learned last night that Turkish spice paste is not the same as harissa.  It can be faked by using tomato paste and a "handful" of Alleppo pepper (Servet's measuring phrase).

 

Dateline: July 22-23, 2020 Perfecting Kielbasa

I had a very large pork shoulder in the freezer that I took out on the morning of July 22.  By that evening, I had completed making kielbasa minus the smoking.  As I started to cut the shoulder up, I found out that it was NOT boned!  I had to cut around the bone in a half frozen hunk of meat and take care not to cut my fingers off with the boning knife.  No accidents!  

After freeing up the bone, I cut up the pork belly.  It came with skin on, which it never has done before, so after thinking about it, I decided to take the skin off.  Why you ask?  Because pork skin unless shatteringly crisp is awful to chew on.  And in an otherwise tender sausage, a gnarly bit of chewy is not very appetizing.  So off came the skin on the belly as well as the skin on the shoulder.  I saved the skin in case some day I have a big vat of hot oil that is begging for chicharones to be made.  

I used the same recipe as before, Homemade Polish Kielbasa, by Hank Shaw.  I did a few things differently than I did on the first go round.  I let the sausages sit in the fridge over night on a rack to allow the casings to fully adhere to the filling.  I also added about 2 teaspoons of yellow mustard seeds to the spice mix.  I did not have the abundance of pork fat that I had in the first go, so I added some beef fat from brisket trimmings that I had in the freezer along with about a pound of pork belly.  In all I had about 10-11 lbs of sausage that needed to be stuffed.

I did have a couple of blow outs while stuffing.  It was one casing that blew out 2 times.  It was responsible for the short guy in the center of the top picture below.  

This was the output from Wednesday night.  As you can see, there is quite a bit of sausage here.  About half will be given away, if I can do it when Bill is not looking!

This morning, I got up and set up the smoker.  And put these bad girls in there.

It is critical that the sausages do not touch each other because that will result in a spot that the smoke will not get to.  This means a "white" spot in an otherwise reddish sausage.  

Here are the finished ones:  

You can clearly see the color change, and I think that is a result of overnight resting and proper smoke coverage.  The last batch were much paler.  The proof will be in the tasting.  When Bill and I sampled some of the sausage pre-stuffing, we were both happy with the flavors.  The overnight sit only will enhance those flavors and the smoke will provide them another layer of flavor.

Every batch is a learning experience.  I learned that being totally prepared ahead of your start is essential as is prepping your equipment.  The tedious part is the cutting up of the meat and grinding it.  

I have a bunch of chicken in the fridge that I was thinking of turning into sausage this weekend.  What I learned from the turkey sausage is that fat is a necessary element.  I have both white and dark meat with skin on and if I think there is not enough fat, that I will grind up a duck breast along with the chicken to help out the lean-ness problem.

Tasting Notes:  

This sausage was delicious!  I know, I know, I say that about everything I cook, but in this case it is not hyperbole!  I like the texture of the coarse grind, the snap of the casing, and the flavor.  We ate a good deal of a very big ring last night, and Bill finished off the remains for breakfast!

Dateline: July 19, 2020 Smoked beef ribs, hurry up style

I had taken a 4-bone package of beef ribs out of the freezer, perhaps a little too late to fully smoke on the grill.  I coated the bone side with Willy's One-Derful rub, and on the meat side, I used Detroit Barbecue Rub that a friend had given me.

This got onto the smoker around 1 pm, which meant that dinner would be pretty late.  

I pretty much just sat around outside dead-heading flowers and trimming the trees.  I would escape into the house to cool off and then go back with water in hand.  

By 6 pm, it was clear that I needed to goose up the temp if we were going to have dinner before midnight.  I pushed it up to 350° F and hoped they would not dry out.  Luckily, when the meat reached about 180° F, I was willing to pull it off and use more than our teeth to eat them!  

all rubbed and ready for smoker

Bad girls off the grill

Check out the smoke ring

They were not quite tender enough, but very tasty and thoroughly enjoyable.  Lesson learned:  you can push your smoker around, it will do what a smoker has got to do!  Get over your timetable!

We ate it with grilled corn on the cob and crunchy salad.

Dateline: July 20, 2020 Another Delicious Windfall of Tuna and Crunchy Salad

Dinner was to be swordfish and scallops grilled, but at 3 pm a neighbor knocked on the door and handed us a BEAUTIFUL yellowfin tuna loin. 

He just caught yesterday the fish yesterday, so super fresh.

Now we had a TON of fish that needed to be cooked.  Got Servet to come over and have dinner with us.  

Went with Union Square Cafe tuna recipe.

Ingredients

2 swordfish steaks, about 7 oz each

3 tuna steaks, about 8 oz each

1/2 lb day boat sea scallops

1 lb asparagus

2 broccoli crowns

homemade teriyaki marinade

2 lemons

1 lime

garlic

ginger 

sesame oil

sesame seeds

olive oil

scallions

salt and pepper

crunchy salad

1/2 sweet onion, sliced in thin half moons

4 stalks celery, sliced

1/2 large jicama, diced

4 mini cucumbers, quartered and sliced

20 cherry tomatoes, halved

1/2 red bell pepper

rice vinegar

olive oil

salt and pepper

Method

Tuna

I made the teriyaki marinade first.  I feel soy sauce is too salty and I used 1/8 c light soy, and 1/8 c dark soy.  Why you ask?  Light soy, this is not the green capped kikkoman bottle, but light soy from an asian market, will provide all the salt you need and dark soy will provide flavor and color.  I used turbinado sugar as I was using dark soy, and grated ginger and garlic.  Since I was using it as a marinade, I did not cook or use a cornstarch slurry to thicken.  

Going back to the USQC recipe, I saw that they called for 2 cups of teriyaki, I only had about 1/2-3/4 of a cup.  I added some shochu instead of dry sherry and certainly not the full amount called for.  I am guess-timating about 2 oz in total.

I divided up the loin into 3 large steaks and 2 smaller end pieces, the end pieces went into the freezer.  Into a plastic bag of the marinade went the three steaks.  I did not cube them up as I thought, "Geez, I have this beautiful fresh loin, why the hell would I cut it into cubes?"  So glad I kept it in steaks.  The amount of marinade was perfect, perhaps even a little too much, so the amount in the USQC would have been overkill!

Swordfish

I kept this simple, juice of 1 lime, a couple of glugs of olive oil, salt and black pepper.  Into a different bag went the 2 swordfish steaks.

Scallops

Simplest of all, just olive oil

I set up a rip roaring fire in the grill and as it came up to temp, I cooked the veggies.  Once up to temp, I cleaned the grate, oiled up the tuna with sesame oil, used cooking spray on the swordfish, and kept the scallops in olive oil to cook last.

The grill was perfect in terms of temp for cooking fish fast.  With both types of fish I got great grill marks.  I got medium marks on the scallops as I was afraid to over cook them and lose their sea-sweetness.

Our feast

don't forget the veggies!

I garnished the tuna with more sesame oil and some sesame seeds, the swordfish was drizzled with some olive oil and slices of lemons rounded things out.  

Everyone was so happy with the meal.  I will definitely keep that marinade and USQC recipe in the rotation whenever I get a windfall of fresh caught tuna!

Dateline: July 18, 2020 Chicken Shawarma to shake the blues away

I decided to make this on the grill instead of turning on the oven in this heat.  Oh man, oh man, oh man, this is a tasty, tasty meal.

The recipe is from the New York Times Cooking from Sam Sifton: Oven Roasted Chicken Shawarma

I urge you to try it whether indoors or out, it is the bomb!

I marinated the chicken in the prescribed marinade and added the onion cut into eighths just before putting it on the grill.  At the front of the grill where it was hottest, I put the chicken thighs and at the back, the onions.

The chicken remained moist and yet also crispy.  There was a nice piquant bite to it.  Instead of chili powder, I used my home smoked fresh ground chipotle peppers.  The other tweak I did was to add a big pinch of chicken adobe spice to the marinade.  The chicken was in said marinade for about 5 - 6 hours and then cooked up rather quickly on a hot grill.

We ate this with steamed green beans and we were both quite happy with the yasso yogurt snack buddy bar as dessert!

A definite keeper!

Dateline: July 14, 2020 Homemade Turkey Sausage and what to do with it?

I ordered from FD some turkey breast and tenderloins, to which I added another tenderloin package from the freezer, this gave me 5 lbs of lean turkey to make sausage with.  

Smoked Sicilian-Style Turkey Sausage 

Makes 5 pounds 

Sicilian sausages rely principally upon fennel seeds for their distinctive taste. Here, the hot smoking cooks the sausage and adds its own inimitable flavor. 

Ingredients 

5 feet small hog or sheep casing 

5 pounds boneless, skin-on turkey (mixture of dark and light meat) 

2 tablespoons kosher salt 

2 teaspoons crushed fennel seeds 

2 teaspoons whole fennel seeds 

2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper 

2 teaspoons crushed red pepper (optional) 

2 garlic cloves, minced 

Instructions 

1. Prepare the casing​. 

2. Cut the turkey into 1-inch cubes. Freeze for 30 minutes. 

3. Grind the turkey through the fine disk of a meat grinder. 

4. In a large bowl, combine the turkey, salt, crushed and whole fennel seeds, black pepper, crushed red pepper (if using), and garlic. Freeze for 30 minutes. 

5. Grind the mixture through the fine disk of the grinder. 

6. Stuff the mixture into the prepared casing, prick air pockets, and twist off into 3-inch links. 

7. Place the sausage on a baking sheet fitted with a wire rack and refrigerate, uncovered, for 1 day. 

8. Hot-smoke the sausages at 180 to 190ºF (73 to 88ºC) for 2 to 4 hours, until an instant-read thermometer shows an internal temperature of 165ºF (74ºC). 

9. Cut the links apart. Refrigerate, wrapped in plastic, for up to 1 week, or freeze for up to 2 months; thaw in the refrigerator overnight.

Reavis, Charles G.. Home Sausage Making, 4th Edition: From Fresh and Cooked to Smoked, Dried, and Cured: 100 Specialty Recipes . Storey Publishing, LLC. Kindle Edition. 

My modifications to this recipe:

I used collagen casings.  I had some and had never tried them.  They are going to be used only when I need to make sure that there are no pork products in what I am making.  They do not hold a twist well and they are not as strong as natural casings.  

I used only lean white meat and supplemented with 80g of duck fat from making confit.  Going forward I would use what was specified in the recipe, a mix of meats with skin (and probably some duck fat as well)

These are the smoked and grilled links.  After smoking I gave them a soak in ice water to prevent the casing from shrinking away from the meat.  

Now the big question was what to do with these links?

I wanted pasta, so I created a sauce of veggies cooked in the instant pot.

Ingredients

1 onion, diced

3 cloves of garlic, sliced

3-4 anchovy fillets

red pepper flakes

3/4 red bell pepper, diced

2 small zucchini, diced

handful of fresh parsley, chopped

1 stalk celery, diced

1 qt homemade chicken stock

1 oz half and half

1/2 c dry white wine

salt, pepper, oregano, basil, and thyme to taste

1/2 lb long pasta, broken in half.  (I used bucatini)

4 links Italian Turkey Sausage, sliced into rounds

any diced cooked vegetables of your choice (clean out the fridge of those tiny containers of left-over veggies)

grated cheese of your choice

Method

1.  Heat Instant Pot on saute.  When hot, add olive oil, onions, garlic, anchovies, and red pepper flakes.  Cook until softened.

2.  Add raw vegetables, parsley, dried spices, salt and pepper and cook until they start to soften.  Add wine to deglaze and then add the stock.  Taste and adjust seasonings

this is just before pressure cooking

3.  Cancel saute, and set up for Pressure Cook 11-12 minutes.  

4.  When Pressure Cook is finished quick release the pressure and puree with a stick blender to your desired degree of smoothness.  Add half and half and stir.

5.  Taste and adjust seasoning.  (I found that it needed salt)

6.  Add in sausage, cooked veggies and broken pasta.  Set pressure on high for 5 minutes.

chopped cooked veggies

sliced sausages

7.  When Pressure Cook is finished, quick release and stir.  Let sit for a couple of minutes to help the starches from the pasta thicken the sauce a bit.  Add some of the cheese to help in that process.  Taste again, and adjust seasonings.

8.  Serve and pass the cheese!

I forgot to take a picture of the finished product, but here is what was left in the pot!  

This was really delicious and I know my husband had no idea about the anchovies and zucchini!  

Dateline: July 13, 2020 What's the Password? Swordfish!

asparagus and broccolini

My favorite summer salad, jicama makes it!

Got 2 beautiful swordfish steaks from FD and I am currently marinating them in garlic, salt, pepper, serrano chili, and olive oil.  The plan will be to grill it off later this afternoon along with some broccolini.  Our building manager also gave me some fresh caught tuna that I will grill as well.  I had given him some of the kielbasa and this was his return gift.  I am so stoked!

My other project today was the start of turkey sausage.  That will get finished off tomorrow and pix will be posted then.

This is the tuna in the upper corner and a piece of swordfish in the lower corner

2 beautiful swordfish steaks

Everything was fabulous tonight.  The fish was delicious on both accounts, and the veggies were crispy and salty and the salad was crunchy and juicy.  Who could ask for more on a lovely summer evening?

Dateline: July 4, 2020 Can you say KIELBASA -- Homemade

I was looking to do something interesting today and decided to check out what was left of my "sausage stash".  I had about 2200 g of pork and 1100 g pork fat.  Bingo, we have a luscious sausage in the offing.

I searched the web looking at recipes and decided on this one, and will, no doubt, tweak it in the future if it is any good.  How could it not be!  Kielbasa is a fav of my husband unit, so I am hoping that this turns out ok.  I have made kielbasa in the past, but it turned out that I ground it too fine.  I used the coarsest disc I had at the time, and subsequently, have invested in a coarser one that I used today.

Click on the link above to get the recipe I used.  I pretty much followed his recipe, but adjusted my seasonings and cure powder #1 according to the weight of the meat and water that I was using.

This is a time consuming enterprise, (see what I did there) plan accordingly.

Suggested Tools

1.  Meat grinder

You will need to cut the meat up into chunks that will fit in the feed tube of your grinder.  I strongly urge you NOT to use your KitchenAid as your grinder.  It is not powerful enough and will smear the fat rather than grind it up.  Also make sure your meat and fat is very cold, even on the verge of freezing.  This will prevent the above mentioned fat smear.  

2.  Stand mixer, or use your impeccably clean hands to mix to bind

3.  Sausage stuffer 

Again, your KitchenAid will heat up the meat and produce less than desirable results.  

If you start out with using your KitchenAid, that's ok, but if you get serious about making sausage and charcuterie then invest in a good grinder.

Soak your casings and don't forget to run water through them to flush out residual salt.  Set aside.

I cut the meat and fat up into about 3/4 inch cubes, which fit easily into the grinder feeder tube.

Prior to grinding add all the spices and cure to the meat cubes to infuse more flavor into the meat.  When I was grinding the meat, I put the "dump" bowl inside another one that was half full of ice to keep the meat cold and prevent fat melt.

I then returned the grind to the fridge and cleaned up, as the article stated.   I used the stand mixer to mix the ice water into the meat.  This was a bit problematic as the meat rose over the top of the bowl and coated all exposed parts of the mixer arm. In the future, I will do it by hand.  The purpose of this mixing is to get the meat "sticky" so that it will hold together in the casing and not be crumbly.

I got out the sausage stuffer and proceeded to stuff 5 lengths of casings.  I had 2 blow outs, so in all it was probably 4, 4-foot lengths that got stuffed.  I have a hand crank stuffer that I really like.  It works well, breaks down for cleaning easily and goes back together quickly,

I let the sausages rest on the counter with the AC cranked for about 40 minutes.  Then onto the smoker they went.  Since they should not touch each other as that interferes with the smoking, so I used a jerky rack that I bought.  Worked like a charm.

They will be hanging out on the smoker for 4 hours.  The internal temp needs to come up to 154-155°F and then they get plunged into an ice bath to quickly cool them down.  Into the fridge and we feast tomorrow!

After 2 hours at 200 degrees, the sausages were up over 155, so off of the smoker they came and into the ice bath they went.

They had nice color, not a deep red, but a nice brownish blush.

Addenda

The proof is definitely in the pudding.  The kielbasas were f*ing fantastic.  They were perfectly spiced, juicy, flavorful, great texture, and with a delightful snap.  Two opposable thumbs up and looking forward to the next time I make them.  All the work and steps were worth it.  

Grilled off a few links.  The flavor was even better and the snap of the casing, sooooo satisfying.  I'm already planning next foray into sausages!