Salsicca Barese: A Sausage Mystery.

Barese sausage recipe.

What a summer for weather huh? A few Fridays ago we decided to roll over to West Chicago because Bonne Femme had a Groupon for the town splash pad, but then this storm boiled up. To wait out the storm we rerouted to one of our favorite family pastimes, wandering around grocery stores. We stopped at Caputo's in Naperville.



I picked up some 00 flour for our "Friday Night Pizza Party,"



And Bonne Femme picked-out some Barese sausage from the meat case.

Barese sausage? As Doug famously said to Kalon on this season's Bachelorette, "Whoa, Check yourself."

I had thought this mythical beast only existed at the finest little Italian grocery on Grand Ave, Bari Foods. And then to pile surprise upon surprise, this delicious link from Caputo's has lamb in it. My belly is happy but my brain is flummoxed, what is a Barese sausage?


View Larger Map

According to Wikipedia Bari is the capital city of the province of Bari, which is in Apulia(Puglia). It's a large port city on the Adriatic. The town seems to have a rich but not quite tourist worthy history, but no mention of any particular sausage, zoom out to the provence and in the hills you'll see lots of vegetables, wheat and sheep, but no ricettas for salsiccia Barese.

Back at the library, my requested sausage book by Aidells shows up and I spot my first glimpse of a "Barese-style sausage" recipe. Aidells states this sausage is popular in the Italian Neighborhoods of New Orleans. Who knew that they had Italians in the Big Easy? According to New Orleans Online "The majority of Italian immigrants in New Orleans are from Sicily and started to arrive in large numbers in the 1880s..." Sicilians, make a note of that. Beyond the typical Italian sausage seasonings, Aidells' recipe calls for parsley and cheese.

Parsley and cheese? As Joey Lawrence famously exclaimed on the TV sitcom Blosssom, "Whoa!"

I wrote a Parsley and Cheese recipe in 2007. It was an ode to a sausage I chomped while living in Brooklyn. In pork shops across the borough they sold large coils of the sausage stuffed in lamb casings, and skewered to be grilled.



Was this the missing link? Were the parsley & cheese sausages from back east Barese? In Brooklyn I don't remember the purveyors calling them Barese, and I never asked what part of Italy they where from....

I want to fuse this link. I find another Barese sausage recipe on the website Sonoma Mountain Sausage. It calls for parsley and cheese too! And there's lamb in it like the Caputo's version. The recipe also calls for 'conserva,' not a typical sausage ingredient, and there's no reference to the recipe source. I need corroboration.

At the library I grab every book I can find on Bari, the region, Italian food, and sausage. Here's what I learn:

Salsicca refers to any fresh raw sausage ment for cooking.

Salume (Salumi pl.)refers to all meat products salted and cured (Think Charcuterie)

Salame (Salami, insaccati) is a type of Salume (Think Saucisson)

A Sulumiere sells salumi at a salumeria. (say that three times fast)

But still no Barese sausage.

In "A Mediterranean Feast," Clifford A Wright devotes ten pages to sausages and reports a recipe with cheese as coming from Sicily. So the parsley & cheese sausage comes from Sicily? That would tie in nicely with the New Orleans reference. I think I'm getting somewhere but no closer to Bari.

But wait, on his website (not in the book) Wright gives a recipe for Zambitta a beef and lamb sausage with cheese and parsley from Apulia! Is it the Barese sausage? I don't know, the ingredient list looks ok, it calls for hog casings, but whatever, and you coil it. But I can't find a mention of Zambitta anywhere other than Wright's website.

Meanwhile back on Grand Ave, in Chicago, I remember the day in 1998 that I said bye to Frank and Ralph as I left for NYC. I asked them where was a I going to find a place like theirs in the Big Apple? "Huh?" was the reply I got.

Years before I had been introduced to the Barese sausage. As a young lad I was amazed by this exotic item, never before had I seen a thin sausage sold by the length. How is diferent from the regular Italian sausage, I had asked. "Well there's parsley in it and no fennel." Huh. Both the Bari and Caputo versions of the Barese have parsley, are stuffed into lamb casings and have NO cheese. I really like the lamb in the Caputo sausage.

Hmmmm...I work out a few batches at home.





I liked the second batch best, here's the recipe:

Pork and Lamb Sausage (Salsicca Barese-esque)

Per 1000g Meat
70% Pork shoulder cubed
30% Lamb shoulder cubed

16g Salt

8g Black pepper ground
7g Fennel seed ground
7g Paprika
4g Coriander ground

20g Milk powder (optional but nice binder)

40g Fresh parsley chopped fine
10g Fresh garlic mince

100 ml white wine

lamb casings.

Method:

Combine and toss cubed meats with salt, refrigerate 2 hours to overnight if possible.

Grind meats through course plate. Place the grindings in a mixing bowl and beat in the spices and optional milk powder using the paddle attachment on a stand mixer or a big wooden spoon. Stir in the herbs and wine. Continue to beat until the mixture comes together, about a minute.

Stuff in lamb casings, coil and skewer. Ask for lamb casings at any meat counter that makes sausage, I usually ask for "a few arm lengths." Don't worry is they want to charge $13/lb, twenty feet of casing will be around $3.

So the mystery continues, but it's tasty sausage.

Cheers.


Further reading:

Bruce Aidell's Complete Sausage Book, by Aidells and Kelly

Delizia!: The epic history of the Italians and their food, by Dickie

The Oxford Companion to Italian Food, by Riley

A Mediterranean feast : the story of the birth of the celebrated cuisines of the Mediterranean, from the Merchants of Venice to the Barbary Corsairs : with more than 500 recipes, by Wright

Italian Style from SW Ohio

Italian Sausage recipe

A couple of years back a guy named George posted a comment that included a recipe for sausage. Well I finally got around to trying it out. Here's his recipe:

George’s Italian Sausage

INGREDIENTS
9 lb pork, boneless, shoulder or butt
3 Tbsp garlic powder
4 Tbsp fennel seed, partially ground in mortar
2 Tbsp red pepper
4 tsp salt
2 tsp pepper, black, freshly ground
2 Tbsp parsley, chopped
¼ cup white wine


Nine pounds is a lot of sausage, make sure you invite a few people over to eat it. The only change I made from the above recipe was in the quantity of salt. I'm not a big salter but I like about a teaspoon (7 g) of flake salt per pound of meat. Also I never been able to put too much parsley in a recipe.

So as America's biggest sausage holiday is upon us let's take time to reflect on what makes this country great: Sausage, made by hand and shared with others.



Thanks for the recipe, George.

Cheers.

Pizza Chop

Making pizza sausage without a grinder.

Got some chicken and a big knife? Let’s make some sausage. Friday night means pizza here at the hermitage, and I use it as a chance to clean out the fridge. But what if you don’t have any… (Horrors!)… sausage on hand. Here’s a pretty quick way to produce the popular pizza topping.

Chicken
I bought a whole chicken at the beginning of the week, boned it, made stock. With the stock I made broccoli soup, and from half of the chicken I made a curry. I took the remaining breast and thigh for the sausage. It weighed about a pound, I diced it. The smaller the better.



Mixing it up.
I mixed some salt and spices with the diced chicken, I let it rest in the fridge for 15 minutes. After the spices had a chance to soak in, I spread the mixture on a sheet pan lined with parchment and popped it into the freezer. It got good and crunchy in about 20 minutes.



Chop Chop Chop
I got the cleaver and started chopping like I was on TV, fast and furious. It took 4 or 5 minutes to get it to the mince that I wanted. Yeah, I suppose I could have used a Cuisinart, but where’s that sport in that? Once chopped, I kneaded the sausage and added a splash of red wine vinegar. Then I cooked it.

Pizza time
My pizza stone cracked into three pieces about eight years ago but it still works. I put it on the top rack and put the oven on high for about an hour. As for the crust, I use a combination of Sapphire and whole wheat and give it an all day rise. The best discussion I’ve found about various pizza dough formulas is in the book American Pie, by Peter Reinhart. Go to the library and check it out.



Here’s where a little heresy comes into play: I don’t care for the mess dusting my peel with semolina or cornmeal causes, so I put my pizza on parchment paper. I would cringe if I saw this in a professional operation (and I have), but at home it saves me from the odor of burning corn meal in the oven. When I’m ready to bake, I move the stone to the bottom of the oven and put in the pie. I pull the parchment after about five minutes and I can use it again for the next pie.



When done, cut into wedges, or squares if in Columbus, oh wait, pizza joints cut it in squares here too, and serve with beer. A fire in the fireplace, Myazaki movie on the tube, Friday night family fun.

Here’s the spices I used for 1 pound (450 grams) of Chicken:
8 g salt
3 g black peppercorns
3 g whole fennel
2 g whole coriander
1 g brown mustard seeds

Mix spices together and run them through a spice mill.

Happy Birthday Mom.

Cheers.

Live from Sausage Week: Chicken n Cheese

I don't usually do a test of a sausage mixture before stuffing, it is what it is right? But I do write down everything I put in and I have notes from almost every sausage I've made (I've got this blog too). When stuffing there is always a little bit at the bottom of the canister that doesn't make it in, that's what gets fried up for snack after a job of grinding and stuffing. Let's get to it:



here are some whole spices about to be ground, Fennel, mustard and coriander. I add salt, spices and powdered milk to the diced chicken.



I dice up some parmesan cheese and put it in the freezer before grinding.





The grinding station is set up, the cheese is mixed with the chicken and we are off and grinding. After grinding I mix in the parsley and a bit of vinegar and water.



Here is a hank of hog casings. Bonne Femme picked them up at Grant Park Packing.



The stuffer is loaded, let's get cranking.



I can run the stuffer solo, but it more fun with two.





Seven pounds of Italian style Chicken, Parsley and Parmesan sausage. That's just a tune up for tomorrow, Sausage Week continues.

Cheers.

Chicken and Cheese Please

Got the winter blues? Get some fresh parsley; the color and the smell will remind you that Spring is not far away. Now that you have some parsley you might as well make some sausage.

Italian Style Chicken Sausage with Parsley and Parmesan

633 g (1lb 6oz) Chicken
130 g Parmesan Cheese
12 g salt
7 g white pepper
7g coriander
10 g dry milk
25 g parsley
A little water and vinegar
medium hog casings

Cut the chicken and the cheese into cubes. put the cheese in the freezer for a few minutes. Meanwhile grind the pepper and coriander together then mix with the salt and dry milk. Stir the spice mixture into the chicken and refrigerate for a few minutes. Rinse and chop the parsley. Combine the chicken and cheese and grind them through a medium plate. Stir the chopped parsley into the ground mixture along with a little vinegar and water to smooth out the texture continue stirring for about a minute. Chill. Stuff into casings.

Yield: 760 g (1 lb 11 oz)

If you are feeling daffy, get a whole chicken, use the carcass and wings for stock, use the meat and skin for sausage. I have used this recipe as a stuffing for ravioli, and I have also made it with pork. Have fun with it.

Cheers.

I wanna be like Bill.

The Accidental Foodie cooks from a book

Recipes

Chicken Italian Sausage with parsley and cheese stuffed into ravioli

Peposo Notturno - Beef shanks braised in Chianti

Dear Gentle Readers:

Put on your foodie hat (chinstrap extra tight), we are diving into a book for this week's adventure. Don't run away, we aren't mushroom hunting with Tolstoy or soft boiling eggs like Toni Morrison, we are looking at Heat by Bill Buford. In this book the author goes on a culinary quest that begins in Mario Batali's restaurant, Babbo, and ends up in Italy to try to find answers to such questions like when did eggs first become an ingredient to for pasta. During his search, Buford learns about rustic Italian preparations, made in home kitchens for centuries, and how they have evolved into fancy pants plates in hipster restaurants. I like the rusty preparation part, but do I have to read aloud while stirring the polenta?

Bonne Femme at the whisk.

I resisted reading Heat, for a long time. The book, for me was like lentil soup: the thought of it didn't really appeal to me but but once I got into it I realized it was really good. You should be able to find this book at the library, it also just came out in paperback. Bonne Femme had the idea of cooking out of it and what she wanted to make just happened to coincide with what I was working on at school.

Peposo Notturno - Pepper by night

Please turn to page 274 in your books. The recipe is so simple that you just have to try it. Basically it is braising beef in wine for a really long time with only pepper salt and garlic added. The hard part is getting the meat. On Page 272 Buford goes in some detail off the knife skills used to attack the beef shank. Since I had carved one up in Kitchen class a few days earlier I was raring to go. I started out with one nine pound beef shank.


After a lot of cutting (I don't recommend this for people who are short on patience or sharp knives) I came away with three pounds of beef shank cubes. As for the other six pounds, I used the bone and trimmings to make a beef stock, and I got about 8 ounces of suet from rendering the fat. But first, I loaded up the dutch oven with the meat, poured in the Chianti a bunch of ground black pepper, a head of garlic, brought it to a boil then set it for stew (about 225F in the oven). Eight hours later you'll have shredded Italian beef. There are lots of little things you could do or add that would make this dish better, but then it wouldn't be Pepposo Notturno.

While that's cooking let's make some pasta.

Making pasta is not particularly hard to do, but describing the process is, so I'm not going to try. I don't make it very often and I always have to look for a recipe to get back on track. After reading Heat I never have to look a recipe again. On page 183, Buford documents one person's pasta recipe: One etto, one egg. One egg For every hundred grams of flour. It works. For the ravioli I made, I used three etti and three eggs.



For the ravioli filling, I wanted to use the Italian Cheese and Parsley sausage that has been so popular around here. This time I made it with chicken. Here's the portions I used:


512 g Chicken
100g Parmesan cheese
10 g salt
4 g white pepper
3 g coriander
10g fresh parsley
5 g dry milk
a little vinegar and water to smooth out the binding.

For the pasta
250 g AP flour
50 g Whole wheat flour
3 large eggs

Since I was making this up, it didn't occur to me that I might have to cook the meat mixture before stuffing the pasta. So I sauteed the forcemeat then I minced it in the Cuisinart.

The listed portions made about 40 to small raviolis which isn't much for a party of seven. But I made them as a garnish for consommé. Why soup? I liked the idea of using one whole chicken to make the stock, the soup and the garnish.

Everybody had a good time at the party.

molding polenta

candid moments at the table

Peposo Notturno with polenta and spinaci alla romana

In a recent essay for class I wrote, "Fixing food should not get in the way of a good life, it should be a part of it." The instructor asked if that was original. At the time I didn't really think much about the line, I was just trying to close out an essay, however I did write it and I do believe it. Anyone can make good tasting food at home, and when you have fun making it, it tastes even better.

Cheers.

Tic

I have a tic. I know it because it happens every time, it's involuntary, and it takes a great deal of effort to control it. I usually don't notice it but my wife mentioned it a few days ago as one of the few things I do that embarrasses her. Whenever I am around a person who is speaking with a accent I start speaking with an accent too. It's especially bad when I hear a Brogue or a French accent. I grew up in Ohio, I have no natural twang or twinge, but it feels so good to shape vowel sounds in the back of my throat and roll them through the roof of my mouth and expel them out my mouth and my nose simultaneously. Not only do I affect an accent, but I invert my sentence structures and repetitively say in my head (at least I don't think I say it out loud) "How do you say...(Comment dit?...)."

Now Gentle Reader you may be wondering why you are reading about psychological problems in a blog about sausage, curing, smoking and whatever else blah blah blah. Well, a couple of weeks ago, I entered the culinary program at Kendall College. And the instructor for my Intro to Kitchen class is French. In addition to wanting to repeat everything Chef says avec accent, all the culinary terms we are learning are French too. My tic is a singing vortex, Batonnet (BA- ton-nay), Tourner (tour- nay) over and over in my head. After five hours I'm exhausted. On Monday we are starting with chicken (Poulet!).

School or no school I must get you caught up on what's been happening around the hermitage. A couple of weeks ago, we had our first Oktoberfest Celebration.

My mom and dad came up to help and we turned out twenty pounds of sausage and some sides. We made Bratwurst with marjoram and caraway:

Then, by special request, we made Italian sausage with parsley and cheese (not exactly German, but our most popular sausage this summer)

And we made a weisswurst.

This traditional München sausage is emulsified, meaning it's a bit harder to make. You grind ice with fat and meat then whip it into a mousse like structure. The final product should have the consistency of a hot dog rather than a brat.

I used a recipe from Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman. In the recipe Ruhlman stresses the importance of keeping the emulsion from breaking: "[A broken emulsion] though flavorful...will feel a little like eating clumps of soggy ground-up newspaper." Well I think I didn't whip it long enough; even though it was light, the texture was all wrong. Still we didn't have any trouble eating it all without giving it to the dog.

The first batch I poached I had the oven temp at 350F and some of the sausages burst. I found an oven temp of 300F ideal for poaching.

How about some sides?

Once again I tried to make sauerkraut, but after two weeks of curing it still didn't taste right, so I picked of a few bags of Bobak's.

Mom mixed up a little sodium hydroxide for pretzels.


Bonne Femme made a warm potato salad and apple strudel.

All in all a very good party. We will work out the bugs and have a bigger and better one next year, maybe you can come help make sausage.

Speaking of sausage my mom waited until the next morning to have hers.

As a strict traditionalist she insisted on having her Weißwurst cooked in water and served for breakfast. What's the German word for waffle?

Thanks to everyone (especially mom and dad) for making our first Oktoberfest such a success I hope to see you again next year.

Cheers.