Green Irish Banger for St. Partick's Day.

Garlic and kale chicken sausage recipe.

You wanna turn your St. Patrick's Day Feast up to 11? How about a green sausage? Today on the blog I've got an banger recipe for you that's as authentic as Irish Coffee and is sure to be a hit at any St. Patty's celebration.



In the natural world, you don't come across green sausage too often. The only one I know of is a chorizo from the Toluca State of Mexico, that's made with green chiles and cilantro. Diana Kennedy mentions it In her book, My Mexico: A culinary odyssey with more than 500 recipes. Rick Bayless gives a recipe for green chorizo that involves spinach powder.



I thought about using spinach for the green, but wanted something more hardy, something that better reflects the spirit of Ireland, and then I remembered kale. While cabbage may be what we Americans think as the "green veg" of the Emerald Isle, kale is perfectly at home in a pot of colcannon.

To make the vibrant green puree, kale needs to be blanched a few times. Set a big pot of salted water on to boil, and set up an ice bath. Drop the kale into the boiling pot for no more than 30 seconds. then put it in the ice bath to slow the coking. Do it 3 times. The point here is to cook the kale without it getting too hot. At a certain temperature the green starts to break down. Puree the cooked kale along with the garlic in a blender, add water as necessary to keep it moving. Since I lent the Vita-Prep to my neighbor to mix grout, I ended up pushing my poorly pureed kale through a metal strainer, it'll be fine. I blanched about a pound (450g) of kale to get my 300g of kale puree.



For that fancy emulsified look grind the meat twice. Here I cut chicken into nice bits, put it into the freezer on a sheet pan, until just crunchy, ground it, spread it out in the sheet tray again, let it get crunchy in the freezer, and ground it again.



Just like pouring paint into the Chicago River, I mixed in the spices then added the green.



To assure the authenticity of this Irish banger, I added potato starch as the binder.



Stuff into prepared hog casings. For a richer patina, let them hang in the fridge for a couple of days.



For the Tricolor trifecta, whip up a pot of Irish cheddar mashers and top with an onion curry gravy.

Kale and Garlic Chicken Sausage

Per 1000 g of Meat
300g Kale puree (see notes above)
15g minced garlic (pureed with the kale)
15 g Salt
5g ground white pepper
2g powdered ginger
2g mustard flour
1g ground mace
pinch of cayenne

20g potato starch or milk powder.

Make as described above. I used a whole chicken cut up for my recipe. If you're buying by the bit, get thighs. Pork will work too.



Happy St. Patricks Day.

Cheers.

Here's a link my other Irish Banger recipe.

Mincing Sausage

The sausage that wasn't, EZ Chicken Chorizo and Freekeh Week.

I wanted to kick off the year with a championship worthy chitterling sausage but instead ended up with The Great Andouillette Wreck. I'll spare you the details but the link will take you to the pictures.

At the same time the family had to eat so I made up some Chorizo. I wanted something not too spicy so the boys would eat it. From a whole chicken I got about two pounds of meat and I ran that through the mincer.



Now if you don't have your great-grandmother's Universal #1 meat grinder with mincing plate, you can use a Kitchen-Aid grinder attachment or just do it by hand. Here's a link to my instructions to make sausage without a grinder.

Here's the quantities

Chicken Chorizo

2 lbs (900g) Chicken minced
10 g salt
5 g summac*
15 g Paprika
1 g dried marjoram
1 bay leaf
1 g canela (Ceylon "Mexican" cinnamon)**
20 g (4 cloves) garlic minced
5 g dry milk powder (optional)
15-30 ml cider vinegar

Nicely grind salt and spices and mix into chicken. Continue to stir while adding garlic, milk powder and finally vinegar. Allow mixture to rest a few hours before cooking in a skillet.


*Summac is a spice I just started playing with, it's used a lot in Middle Eastern cooking and it's part of the spice blend, za'atar. Straight out of the bag, the flavor gives hint of Nacho Cheese Doritos. I have also been using it on top of focaccia. I will be using it a lot more.



Anyway it's processed with salt so if you don't use it in the chorizo recipe up the salt a bit, I usually salt 7 g (1 tsp flake) per pound of meat.

**Canela - "Mexican" cinnamon, true cinnamon, Ceylon cinnamon, NOT cassia. I talk about the differences between Canela and what we Americans call cinnamon in another post about Chorizo. Find canela at a grocery that specializes in Hispanic items or visit your favorite spice merchant. OR use the brutish cassia that's in the cupboard, just use a little less than called for in the recipe.

Since I wanted this chorizo to be kid friendly it's pretty mild, feel free to jazz it up. Over the past week we have had this sausage several different ways, but my favorite way is cooked up with potato and onion for breakfast.



Freekeh Week

By Thursday of last week, Bonne Femme figured out it I was putting freekeh into all of our dinners. I love the smoky flavor of this roasted wheat (click on the picture to see a list of what I made), BUT this stuff is full of rocks and it really needs a hard sort. I spread it out on a baking sheet and go through it grain by grain. I so far have bought two packages of freekeh each having about the same percentage of debris. I will investigate further.

In the meantime I came up with a great recipe using it ground up: Freekeh tortilla.



This is a somewhere between an actual tortilla and a crêpe.

Yield about six

70g /2.5 oz/ 1/2 cup ground freekeh*
70g /2.5 oz 1/2 cup AP flour
4g / 1/2 tsp baking powder
Salt
Water
Oil for cooking

Combine the dry ingredients with enough water to make a pourable batter(a cup or more). Using an oiled non-stick pan, cook the tortilla like a pancake.



I used this savory flat bread for huevos rancheros (picture at the top). I think it's worth the hassle.

*What do I mean by hassle? Grinding freekeh. I used spice grinder to pulverize the freekeh and a fine sieve to sort it out, re-pulverize un-sifted bits, etc.

Most gluttonous gluttony coming soon, did someone say snails?

Cheers.

Meatball Mania

Recipes:

Finnish (not Swedish) meatballs, Merguez Meatballs, Lentil and Freekeh soup.

Meatball Mania, get into it! Meatballs are a quick and easy addition to the holiday buffet table or as my Finnish friends like to call it, the bread and butter table, Voileipäpöytä. Let's get grinding.

I wrote about Finnish Meatballs last year. This time I have updated the recipe with sautéed onions and Wasa bread.



Finnish Meatballs with Pulverized Swedish Crispbread

900g/2lb Chicken ground
14g salt
5g black pepper
2g allspice
1g mace

40g (about 4) Wasa light rye crispbreads
30g onion miced, sautéed in a little butter.
5g Milk powder

120 ml/ 1/2c cold water

Grind spices and add to ground chicken. Grind Wasa and add to mixture. Stir in onion milk powder and cold water.



Form 20g (3/4 oz) portions on lined sheet bake in 400F oven for 10 minutes. I did it in two batches.

Yield: about 50 meatballs. Serve with brown sauce or make Cranberry Sauce (recipe in here)



Freekeh in Beta.

Smoked grains? sign me up. I first learned about Freekeh a few weeks ago when Noëlle Lothamer featured it on her blog simmer down! On first my taste I think it really has the smokiness of bacon. The Oxford Companion to Food reports that it's made by gathering green wheat and roasting them in the fields over an open fire. Then the kernels are shucked and packaged either whole or cracked.



Now I have only gotten one bag of this stuff, but I found a lot of stones in mine. It's like sorting beans. I lay them on a baking sheet lined with parchment, and pick through a little at a time then rinse. Noëlle reported that she didn't have much stone trouble, so I'll have to get some more bags to compare. In the meantime I think the flavor is worth it.

My first test for freekeh is lamb meatballs.



I got lamb shoulder and I had some chicken leftover and I ended up with a pretty good meatball.

Lamb and Chicken Meatball (beta recipe)

2.5 lbs 1130g Ground meat about half lamb half chicken
90 g Freekeh, sorted, not rinsed.
18g salt
2g coriander
1g cumin
1g black pepper

30g garlic minced

120ml Cold water



Process freekeh in spice grinder, then then run the powder though a sieve. Grind salt and spice together. Stir Freekeh and spices into ground meat, then mix garlic and stir in water.

Form 20g (3/4 oz) portions on lined sheet bake in 400F oven for 10 minutes. I did it in three batches.

Yield: about 60 meatballs. Serve with plain yogurt and harissa.

What's really great about meatballs is that they can be made way ahead of time and then frozen. In my own version of what the pros call IQF, I place the meatballs on a baking sheet in a single layer and freeze. Then bag em up.

It's Buffet magic.

In the meantime here's a quick (and supercheap)weeknight meal. Lentil and freekeh soup. This turned out really good:

Dice and sauté medium onion and one carrot in butter. add 4oz small lentils already sorted and rinsed. Add 1 oz of Freekeh already sorted and rinsed. Add 4 cups of chicken stock, 1/2 tsp of salt, two cloves of garlic smashed and peeled, cracked pepper. Bring to a boil. Reduce and simmer until tender, about 30 mins. Serves 2-4.

Bonne Femme asked me to spend a little less time cooking. I dunno, I promised not to hide in the kitchen, and enjoy the Holidays. You do the same.



Cheers.

Bangkok Brat

Chicken Thai curry sausage recipe

This episode is about an obsession with curry. Have you ever wondered how to take the wonderful flavors of curry and put it into a sausage? Dude, I have. After months of searching, researching, cracking and grinding, I have come up with not one but two curry sausage recipes, One for the enthusiasts, and one culled from the 'Ethnic' section at the local supermarket. But first let's take a quick look at how this current obsession got started.



It started a year ago. I gave a cooking school friend, Venique, some parsley parmesan sausage to sample. A couple weeks later she traded back some curry. Specifically four bags of curry that she had made with her parents who were visiting from Bangkok. While I don't encourage my boys to trade lunches at elementary school, if you are in a cooking class, bring something to share. Anyway this stuff blew away the paste I could get in a jar. What kind of exotic ingredients did they use? Before she could answer, I think there was quiz on dicing onion or sautéing skate, so the curry remained a mystery.



Fast forward to Labor Day this year. With the last bit of red curry, I made up a curry sausage for friends to try over the holiday weekend. It turned out pretty good, I dare say a blog worthy sausage. But wait, I can't blog about a sausage that uses a paste made by a friend with ingredients that I don't even know. How are you, the reader, supposed to make this sausage? I don't want the blog to be about lifestyle, sometimes I want to give you some news you can use. I guess I better find out how to make a Thai curry.

So I went to the library. I found Cracking the Coconut, by Su-Mei Yu. But before I could read the curry recipe I got distracted.



Coconut milk without the can.

In my fantasy restaurant kitchen, one tool I would NOT have is a can opener, so when Su-Mei Yu gave a recipe for milking coconuts on page 68, I ran out and bought some coconuts. I turned my enthusiasm up a notch by using my grinder attachment to process the meat.







Growing up I thought the only way to get pumpkin for a pumpkin pie was out of a can. I thought the same of coconut milk. The milk is not the water you hear sloshing around a fresh coconut, but fat and liquid extracted from the pulverized meat. You can even get great tasting milk from unsweetened flakes. Milking coconut is not the easiest process, but for the dedicated cook, it's worth it.



It makes a wicked good coconut cream.

If you want to make fresh coconut milk from coconuts check out Su-Mei Yu's book. She also suggests saving the brown husks for the smoker, I'll get to that sometime soon. For using unsweetened shredded I'll give you a recipe in a few minutes.

Cracking the Coconut is great primer on Thai cooking. One of the most important points made in the book is that Thai food tastes best when made at home. Once you figure out how simple it is you may never go out for Thai again. Okay maybe that's a little dramatic, but I can't remember the last time I ate out Thai. I do rememeber the last time I made a Pad Thai for a midnight snack. I feel the same way about Mexican food, all dishes that I love to eat started as a meal made at home, so it makes sense that once you have a grip on the ingredients, the food should be easy to fix at home. Restaurants are left for when you want to take a ride on the merry-go-round. Oh boy I'm getting off track here, Back to the curry.

I cross referenced curry recipes in several books. One worth mentioning is Hot Sour Salty Sweet by Alford and Duguid. I like this book for its description of the different cultures and cuisines of SW Asia and how they are related. In general all the books agreed on the ingredients for red curry, for the sausage I choose to focus on the following ingredients:


Dry red chiles


Garlic


Lemon grass


Fish sauce


Galangal

And a few spices from the cupboard: Cumin, Coriander and white pepper.

With the exception of galangal, you can get these ingredients at a plain old grocery store. But galanlgal is worth searching out, it is used a lot in Thai cooking. Galangal, galanga or in Thai, Kha, is a rhizome that's related to ginger. Most cookbooks I've read suggest that you can substitute fresh ginger for galangal. Now that I have had the chance to compare the two I think they may be cousins but not kissing cousins. Galangal has piney-peppery undertones that are sublime compared to the astringent ginger. In curry ginger will work but galangal enlightens. I scoured the southland for the herb and only found frozen, which seemed to work, I also have powdered from penzey's which I used for a long time but now have concluded it is not a suitable form for the flavor.

Fresh lemon grass is also a very important herb. Don't bother with the dry stuff. You can find it fresh at Asian specialty markets, or better yet remember it for your garden. I grew it for the first time this year and I was very happy with the yield.

Okay, let's get on with the recipes.

Hot side hot and cool side cool.



Lemon grass and galangal are rather fibrous plants that don't lend a nice texture to sausage. Instead of worrying about mincing and mashing I added them to the coconut milking process. So along with those ingredients here's how I made my coconut milk.

mise-en-milk
Blender
medium mixing bowl
rubber spatula
Fine mesh strainer or cheesecloth

1 cup/3oz/85g shredded unsweetend coconut
2 T/1oz/30g fresh galangal chopped
1 stalk lemon grass the white (bottom 6 inches) chopped
2 cups/16oz/450 ml boiling water

Combine all ingredients into a blender. Be careful blending hot ingredients, they like to explode. Blend for at least 30 seconds. Pour concoction into mixing bowl. Since the mixture is to hot to handle, stir/mash/message the pulp with a rubber spatula. Do this for two minutes. Strain the milk into a clean bowl pressing out every drop. It should taste very peppery lemon-grassy and coconutty sweet. Refrigerate.

Next I worked on the dried peppers.

15 dried small peppers, stems and seeds removed,

soaked them in warm water for 10 minutes, discarded water, put peppers in the blender, added maybe 1/2c/4oz/110 ml water, and pulverized. Be careful this time because the peppers are spicy hot. pour into bowl and set aside.

Spice mixture

2tsp/8g white peppercorns
1tsp/2g whole cumin seed
1tsp/2g coriander seed
2tsp/14g salt

Toast the cumin and the coriander in a dry skillet if you're feeling natty. Combine spices and salt and grind fine. Set aside.

The Bird.
I like using whole chickens (minus giblets) for making sausage. This recipe calls for two pounds (2lbs/ 900g) of chicken, which is what I got off of a 3-1/2pound Amish fryer. Use the bones and wings for stock. Grind the chicken then add the following:

the spice mixture

2tsp/8g fish sauce

1/2c/120g chilled coconut milk mix (if the cream and have separated use cream first, save remainder for soup.)

Pepper sauce to taste. I used half of my mixture (60g) and got a medium spicy sausage.

1 clove garlic minced

1/4c/20g fresh coriander leaf (AKA Cilantro) chopped.

Stir mixutre with big wooden spoon until is comes together and looks even. Stuff into sheep casings, or make patties or whatever.

That's should be enough sausage for 4-6 people.



I think that recipe is complicated but worth it. I will continue to tune it, so feel free to write in comments. But let's say you want the flavor or red curry but you don't have the time to swing around to a Asian food specialty store. If you find fish sauce and a can of coconut milk at your supermarket, I think you can get a decent curry sausage.

Supermarket Thai curry sausage

2lbs/900g Chicken, ground
2tsp/14g Salt
2tsp/ 8g white peppercorns
1tsp/2g whole cumin seed
1tsp/2g coriander seed
1/2tsp/1g/ cayenne pepper
2tsp/4g paprika
1/2tsp/1g ground ginger
2tsp/8g fish sauce
1/2c/120g coconut milk
2T/30g juice from a lime
1 clove garlic minced
1/4c/20g fresh Cilantro (AKA coriander leaf) chopped

Grind whole spices with salt and combine with all other ingredients, stir mixture until it comes together and looks even. Stuff into sheep casings or make patties.

I served my Bangkok Brat on a Labriola pretzel roll, with sliced tomato, mustard and a Thai cucumber carrot relish. the relish is dressed with fish sauce, sugar, salt and lime juice.



Thai Red curry, make it good, make it yours.

Cheers.

Chicken Meatball

Everyone loves meatballs. Yesterday morning, on her way out the door, Bonne Femme asked if I had anything for her to make for dinner.

"Well I have half a chicken how about some meatballs?"

I came up with this recipe for a party last Christmas, but they are good anytime of the year.

Finnish Meatballs - Lihapullat

620g (1lb 5oz) Chicken. That's half a chicken, bones removed skin on.
8 g (1 t) Kosher salt
2 g black pepper
1 g allspice
Pinch of mace or nutmeg
Pinch of caraway seed
2 g mustard seed

5 g dried milk
90 g Onion diced
30 g of bread whole wheat or rye or whatever is laying around, torn up



Dice the chicken. Process salt and spices as needed in spice mill. Mix together all ingredients in a bowl and refrigerate for an hour. Run the mixture through meat grinder using the small plate (I use the meat grinder attachment for the Kitchen Aid). If you don't have a grinder, you can do it by hand, read about making sausage without a grinder here. Knead the mixture in the bowl, by hand, until it comes together about one minute.



Preheat the oven to 400F. A portion scoop (that's a #40 pictured above) makes quick work of forming 1 oz meatballs, they are like ice cream scoppers of varying sizes that you can find at restaurant supply stores. Anyway, put em on a cookie sheet, using parchment paper makes things easier, but do whatever you want. Bake them for about 10 minutes.



Let them cool on a rack. I made about 24 1oz meatballs. Once you get the hang of it play around with the seasonings. The dry milk helps retain moisture and the mustard works as an emusifier; together these ingredients make the texture light and juicy.

I decided to have a Finnish themed Christmas Party, a Pikkujoulu, after traveling to the Lapland last summer. I asked my Suomen sister-in-law for a recipe. she said "What do you mean? Just make meatballs."

I said "Ok...What's the difference between Swedish and Finnish meatballs?"

"The Finns don't eat Swedish meatballs."

Okay then.

Kippis.

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.