Tuco's treats

 Tuco left us late on Saturday night. Tuco loved me so well that when my mom came to visit he got in between us to protect me and wouldn't leave my side. He was steadfast in his protection, his care. It is a gift to be loved in such an uncomplicated way, and that is how Tuco loved us all. Especially Alex. He loved Kristen, Paul, Matt, and so many other friends, and we all loved him. Just by being himself he brought us all great joy. We were lucky to know him. He loved these peanut butter treats I made him. I would roll them out and cut them in the shape of a heart. Why not, in honor of Tuco, make these treats for your friends' dogs, or your own. I promise they will love them too. Tuco, you are greatly missed. 

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup oatmeal

1 cup plain peanut butter (no sugar, no salt)

1 egg

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 cup water

In a big bowl, mix all ingredients together, and pat out onto a surface, about 1/2" to an inch thick. Cut into heart or other dog loving shapes and place on a cookie sheet - they can be close, because they won't spread. Bake at 350, 20 minutes on one side, then flip and bake 20 minutes on the other side. Remove from the oven and let cool a few hours or even overnight. Wrap them up and take them to the dog you love.

Rest in peace Tuco. I hope your loving soul makes it way into another puppy, so someone else gets to experience the love that is you.

Summer is Coming

I know this because the grape tomatoes taste so sweet. I cannot wait to pull them off the vine. I think there are grape tomatoes planted this year; I hope. Grape tomatoes are versatile. They can be eaten raw, be roasted, sauteed, fried ... well, I guess all tomatoes ... but yum, grape tomatoes. I just had an idea about battering and frying grape tomatoes - I just might try it - sort of like tempura, with tomatoes. Who's with me on that deliciousness? Anyway, in this case, they are sauteed in oil and smashed, for an incredibly easy meal which is perfect for late late spring, nearly summer. 

The origin of this recipe comes from Real Simple, many years ago. I like it because it requires no real measurement, is very easy, and is good for an entry level cook or a learned chef. I make this recipe for one or two people. Double-ish it if you are feeding more. 

From your pantry: olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic

Buy: one pint grape tomatoes, long skinny pasta like angel hair or thin spaghetti, which let's face it, is pretty much angel hair, basil, and possibly some grana padano (possibly my very favorite hard cheese) if you're up for it, it works well on top but isn't crucial

This dish takes literally 8 minutes to prepare, plus the 10 minutes to wait for the water to boil. Dinner in 18 minutes people. I love dinner in 18 minutes. 

Start your water. Salt it. Cover it. Let it come to a boil. In the meantime, grab a couple / few cloves of garlic depending on your garlic flavor preference and slice thinly into discs. Wash your tomatoes in a colander. Use this colander later to drain your pasta. Wash your basil, and dry it between a couple paper towels.

A few minutes before your water boils, pour some, and by some I mean enough to heavily cover the bottom, olive oil into a saute pan. Heat this over medium heat - about 5 or 6 on an electric stove. While that's warming up, add your pasta into the pan and set your timer. When the oil is heated, add the tomatoes. They're going to sizzle, snap, and otherwise make you believe those crazy kids are setting off fireworks in the neighborhood again, but fear not! It's just the watery tomatoes getting all hot and bothered and popping. 

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Give your pan a swirl to keep them moving, which will also prevent them from popping and simultaneously leaping out of the pan. It happened to me, look in the picture, I'm not lying. Once you start hearing them pop, grab a metal spatula and start smashing them. This is fun, kind of like bubble wrap, but with tomatoes. 

At this point, your pasta probably has a minute or two left. Reduce the heat to 1 or 2 (low), and add in the sliced garlic. Also throw in a pinch of kosher salt (maybe half a teaspoon or so) and a few turns of your pepper mill. Give it a stir and let it come together. 

Now drain your pasta and put it in a pasta bowl or other serving dish. I really like pasta bowls though - bought four this year for the first time, and it's quite the improvement, especially for serving very saucy pasta dishes, which this one definitely is. 

Finally, tear up maybe 6-10 leaves of basil into pieces (the perfection is in the imperfection), and stir them into the tomato sauce. Pour onto the pasta. If you're up for it, add some freshly grated grana padano, but maybe save that for a time when the tomatoes themselves are less superb. December, perhaps. I love the simplicity of ingredients but enormous flavor of this meal.

My chocolate chip cookies

There are so many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of chocolate chip cookie recipes out there, this one is mine. It's derivative, as I suspect many are, of the Tollhouse recipe. That recipe is a great place to start. Actually, if you have never adjusted a recipe before, I think this is the one I would start with. There are so many elements in the recipe which can be altered, which makes for fun (and often successful) experimentation. 

People love these cookies. I'm still seeking an elusive taste that I had once in a chocolate chip cookie in 1991 - seventh grade science class. I will never forget that mundane moment made forever memorable. That cookie had a rich molasses-y flavor to it that I haven't figured out yet - but I'm not finished trying. Here's where I'm at right now, a cookie that spreads a bit, is chewy on the inside and crispy on the outside edges.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

The ingredients are all standard: butter, white and brown sugar, vanilla, eggs, flour, baking soda, and salt. Plus, of course, chocolate chips. Buy these things. Get out your measuring cups and spoons, a large bowl, your hand mixer, a cookie sheet or two, and foil. 

Ingredients, in order of adding to the bowl: 

Two sticks butter (1 cup) - don't use margarine (does anyone these days?) or shortening. Yuck.

1 cup packed brown sugar (freshness matters! old brown sugar is dried out brown sugar is dried out cookie blech. Sometimes, I use a mix of light and brown and sometimes I don't. Do whatever you wish.)

1/2 cup white sugar
1 and a 1/2 to 2 teaspoons vanilla extract (real vanilla people.)
2 room temperature eggs. I don't know why room temperature, I just like them that way. I feel like they help my batter fluff up.

1 rounded teaspoon baking soda. Why rounded? Baking soda is what causes browning / crisping in your cookie, and I like a cookie that's brown with an edge crispness. Ever baked cookies that were floury blahness? You left out the soda. I've done it, I'll admit it. It isn't pretty. 

1/2 tsp salt - kosher salt, crushed a bit to make a finer flake. I think you can taste the salty delicious difference.

2 and 1/4 scant (every measure should be less than the full cup, or just partially fill the 1/4 cup) cups all-purpose flour. Fluff up that flour with a whisk before measuring. Really, or else you'll have a seriously floury, heavy, gross like your aunt who can't cook cookie. (For the record, I have no aunts who can't cook that I know of.)
A bag of your preferred chocolate chips. I tend to buy Tollhouse, but also like Trader Joe's and Ghiradelli. Those flavors all differ just slightly, but I think the melt is pretty much the same. Use what you like.

Preheat to 375.

Now that butter you just bought? You want it soft, even almost melty. Why? Because melted butter causes spread, and to me, spread in a cookie is a grand thing. I don't suggest liquefying the butter, which might give you too much spread, but here's what I would do: leave the butter out for the afternoon to soften completely on its own, or put one stick in the microwave in its wrapper for 15 short seconds. It will be very soft, but not liquid. 30 seconds to liquefied, just so you know.   The other stick you can soften just slightly, or also do the 15 second thing. The softer your butter, the more spread in your cookie. At least, that has been my experience.

Throw that soft butter in your bowl and beat it with your mixer for a bit on a medium high speed. Add in your brown sugar and beat the heck out of it. Then add your white sugar and beat it again. Use a spatula to get the unincorporated ingredients off the side of the bowl (do this with the mixer off). 

Beat for quite some time, with love, because that matters. It really does. Any time I feel rushed and could care less about my cookie, it tastes like crap. Caring about what you're baking is half the battle to deliciousness. So, now you have a fluffy butter sugar mixture. Add your vanilla, blend. Add your eggs, and beat the heck out of it once again. I think the more you can aerate the batter the better, just like with a cake. Some might disagree, but I like lots of lightness in my cookie. 

Some people might tell you to sift your dry ingredients together before adding them to the batter, but I say no! Why bother? That's a lot of work that seems not entirely necessary. It is in some baking recipes, of course, but not with these cookies. So, having said that, add your baking soda and beat, add your salt and beat. Then, add your flour, one cup at a time, and beat. So, one cup flour, beat. One cup flour, beat. 1/4 cup flour, and you got it, beat. Make sure all your flour is off the bottom of the bowl and in the batter, you might want to employ your spatula at this point.

 Notice the lovely subtle variations in these batter stages.

Put that mixer down at this point. Stir in your chocolate chips, then make sensible drops onto your cookie sheet. 

For the record, some people suggest refrigerating your batter overnight to allow the dough to achieve a richer flavor. I've done this and have not found it terribly different, but by all means, give it a shot and let me know how it goes! Bake those cookies at 375 for about 10 minutes 30 seconds (I find the first batch takes longer to bake than subsequent batches, but I reuse a hot baking sheet, so that's likely why) and when the cookies come out of the oven, promptly remove them with a thin spatula to foil, which you have laid out on your counter. I think this matters, I don't know why. I feel like I get a better bottom of my cookies by letting them cool on foil. Maybe there is science to this, but I am way too tired to look that up tonight. When they are cool, wrap in foil and distribute to friends and family. Hope you enjoy these, I always do. - T

Potato Leek Soup :: This is Simplicity

The best thing about potato leek soup, besides its simplicity, is its malleability. You need only four ingredients, plus salt and pepper. Four ingredients! Those four ingredients can be added in different amounts to produce slightly different soups.

Get yourself to the store and purchase anywhere between five and eight leeks. Grab two (large) or three (medium) baking potatoes. Buy a box of chicken (or vegetable, if you're so inclined) broth - you'll need five or so cups, maybe a little more. You probably have butter, but if not, grab that too, preferably unsalted. I'm a fan of unsalted butter for all cooking and baking - for smearing on bread is a different story. For garnish, get a couple slices of bacon from the meat counter and some scallions from the vegetables area too.

Talk about easy: you need a sharp knife, potato peeler, long spoon, soup pot, and cutting board.

Dice your leeks, white part only. Don't fret if you get a little of the greenish part, it won't hurt. I cut mine down the middle to create two half domes, then slice those again down the middle, then slice in half inch increments to make a large dice. Peel your potatoes and slice them thinly. They'll probably turn brownish from oxidation in the open air. The browning is caused by oxidation; if you want your potatoes to stay white, put them under cold water. They'll have to sit for a while anyway, so you might as well. While you've got the cutting board out, slice your scallions, and finally, dice your uncooked bacon. 

Melt between one and two tablespoons of butter in a large soup pot, over medium heat. Add your leeks and cook them, stirring them frequently, on medium until they are shiny and fairly translucent. It's very important to watch them and stir them, because a browned leek is a burnt leek is a bad leek is a let's go buy some more leeks and start the soup over. So this leek saute will take about twenty minutes. 

When your leeks are soft and shiny, add in about five cups of your chosen broth - for me, the choice will always be chicken. Then add in your potatoes. See, this is incredibly simple. Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce the heat to a high simmer (not crazy boiling, but some bubbles) and walk away for about a half hour. Actually, only walk away for about twenty minutes, because you want to cook your diced bacon at some point then remove it to a paper towel to drain. When you're done with that task, the potatoes should be soft and beginning to break up. At this point, salt and pepper to your liking. I like a lot of freshly ground pepper in my soup. I throw in a small palmful of salt - it's probably a teaspoon or so. You can always add more later if need be. 

Transfer the soup to a blender or food processor (in batches! learn from my mistakes!) and process to your desired consistency. I like mine very smooth, but some people prefer a chunkier soup. You could probably use a potato masher and do this by hand if you wanted more texture. 

Top with scallions and bacon and appreciate how something so simple can be so incredibly delicious.

Yum.

Red Beans and Rice (It's gray, it's chilly, this is bright and spicy)

It's nearly the end of March, and though we had a week of very lovely and mild weather, more normal weather has resumed - blustery, rainy, and gray as can be. There is hardly a striation in the clouds, it's that gray. I don't know if I can use striation in that previous sentence, but I did anyway. Anyway, it's kind of depressing, but to cheer myself, I make things like red beans and rice. Some will look at this recipe and call me a blasphemer of the south because this recipe uses bacon instead of sausage or ham, but I really love it this way. Unfortunately, I have no idea where this recipe originates from, though my best guess is that it's from a newspaper in either Chicago or Greensboro. It's a recipe I've had for quite a while, and makes for a delicious, satiating meal. Even better, it improves with age, and you can eat the leftovers for two days straight, or rather I can eat the leftovers for two days straight, which is a personal record, as I generally tire quickly of the same anything.

This is a fairly simple meal to make, though there's a lot of prep work involved ... do it ahead of time and you can pretend you're a television chef, adding prepped bowls of this and that. Sadly, no sous chef is going to do the work for you, unless you have a helpful kid around, or a partner who owes you a favor.

You will need a large (4-6 quarts) heavy-bottomed pot with a lid, cutting board, knives, bowls for holding your chopped stuff, and a shot glass for measuring out your Tabasco. Believe me, it's much easier than trying to shake it into a measuring spoon.

Go to the grocery store and in the vegetable area, grab two small peppers, one red, one orange or yellow, or get fancy and get all three colors, but use half of one yellow and one orange with the red.  Also buy one bunch of scallions (aka green onions), a large yellow onion, and a garlic bulb.

At the meat counter, buy four slices of thick sliced bacon. You could buy a package of bacon and use that, but I really prefer the thickness here, plus I find the skinnier bacon more challenging to dice while raw. Don't go too lean on the bacon, the fattiness is a good thing for coating the rice.

You will also need two 15 ounce cans of red beans. Not kidney beans or chili beans, these are just called red beans, you'll find them in the bean section.

Pantry staples you need are a cup of long grain rice, two cups of chicken broth (if you only have one can, which is just over 14 ounces, you could always use water for the last two ounces ... but I always use all broth - also, I always use low sodium broth from the store. I'm sure if you made your own that would taste super awesome, but who has time for that? At any rate, I figure I can always add salt later if I need to, but regular sodium broth might be too salty to begin with, at least for me.), Tabasco, and salt.

Really, I'm not kidding when I say prep before you get started. There are a lot of things to chop up:

Chop the two (or one and two halves) small peppers with a good kitchen knife; mine looks like of like this. I like mine kind of large, but some people might prefer more of a dice. What's the difference you might ask? Read more here. I had a small pepper languishing in the fridge, so I chopped it up as well. Set aside in a bowl.

Rinse your knife (do this before you chop anything new, and your cutting board too), chop your onion to the same shape, or smaller if you prefer. Set aside in a bowl.

Slice 1/4 cup's worth of green onions. I make the slices pretty skinny, about a 1/16 - 1/8 inch. Set aside, or put in the fridge, because you won't use these until the very end.

Chop a clove of garlic (I use two, because I do love the garlic), and add it to the onion bowl.

Finally, chop your four slices of bacon. I do this by stacking two pieces of bacon on top of each other, slicing lengthwise down the center, then chopping 1/2 inch pieces. You'll see why the thick cut bacon is the best, when you are suffering at the cutting board with your skinny bacon. Learn from my experience.

Measure one cup of long grain rice. Measure two cups of chicken broth into a pourable container. Shake a tablespoon of Tabasco into the shot glass. I'm pretty sure a Tbs is about half a normal sized shot glass. That's what I always use. You can always add more later. Just a note if you think it's not enough: I find that the next day, the rice has soaked up more of the Tabasco, and it tastes quite a bit spicier. Be forewarned, wimpy spice people. Measure 1/2 tsp salt and set aside. I use sea salt in this recipe.

Finally, drain and rinse the beans in a colander.

I think you're ready to get cooking.

Cook your diced bacon in the pot over medium-high heat (7ish on the electric stove) until it's crisp. As you probably know if you've ever cooked bacon, it will produce its own cooking oil - or grease, as some might say. Watch it and stir it now and again so the bacon doesn't stick. When it's brown and crisp, take the pot off the heat and remove the bacon a paper towel on a plate to drain. Use a slotted spoon or something with holes to do this, because you want to keep the grease in the pot. If it seems like a ton of grease, you might want to pour some into a jar. I guess I usually have about one tablespoon, maybe one and a half, of grease in the bottom of the pot after I remove the bacon.

Put the pot back on the medium (6-7 electric) heat, and add the onion and garlic. Cook this for five minutes and stir it often - you do not want your onions / garlic to brown - they'll be shiny from the grease, and that will be awesome. After five minutes, make sure your salt, broth and Tabasco are in reaching distance, then stir in the rice. Cook this for two minutes and stir CONSTANTLY, just like with risotto.

After two minutes, add the salt, broth, and Tabasco. Stir, then bring this to a boil over high heat (8-9 electric). When it comes to a full boil, reduce the heat to low (1-2-3 electric). Cover the pot and simmer for 15 minutes. This is when your rice absorbs the broth.

After the 15 or so minutes, take off the lid, and add in the peppers, beans, and bacon. Now you see why such a large pot is so important. Stir everything to combine, and cook another five or so minutes, until your rice is tender. I find I usually let it cook on low maybe 10 to 15 minutes, because I like the peppers to soften up a bit too.

Take off the heat, and stir in the scallions you previously chopped. Holy goodness. This is SO good. One of my favorites, and really very simple work to create something so delicious. Enjoy. Preferably with a beer.

Hey, good news. The sun just came out. 

Granny's Sugar Cookies :: Simple, Humble, Perfect

The sugar cookie is a simple thing, there's not too much too it, and yet it is one of the most sweetly satisfying treats, when made right. When you want to make a sugar cookie right, Granny's recipe is the one, the only. This cookie is legendary in my family, my dad's very favorite. These cookies are also a great metaphor for my Granny, who died in early 2009 at 89 and a 1/2. 89 and a 1/2! We should all get such a life. Granny was one of the wisest, humble, loving people I have ever known. She lived her life with great simplicity and one of her sayings that I love, passed onto my dad and then onto me was "kill them with kindness." This is something I'm constantly trying to achieve - but I have many good models in my family for how it works. If you need to kill someone with kindness, you should bake them a batch of Granny's simple, humble, and perfect sugar cookies. Go ahead, see what happens. I bet it will be good.

Granny's Sugar Cookies 

Happily for you, this recipe requires no unusual kitchen equipment except a rolling pin and cookie cutters. If you don't have a rolling pin, you could use a large can, though that might drive you slowly insane. You could definitely use an clean, empty can as a cookie cutter, if you don't own any traditional cutters. You will need a cookie sheet, but I'm pretty sure most people over eighteen own at least one, for bagel bites if nothing else. You can mix this dough by hand, as I'm sure my Granny did for many years; however, a mixer will allow you to aerate the sugar and butter, which results in a far lighter, crisper cookie. 

This is a pantry staple recipe, so long as you have ever baked a thing in your life. If not, you're probably not a reader of food blogs, but if you are indeed reading this and planning it for your first baked good ever, get yourself to the grocery store. You will need unsalted butter. It's important to use unsalted butter in baking, unless you want a salty cookie - this could work in certain situations, but it doesn't here. You will also need all purpose flour, white sugar, a large egg (did you know that all baking recipes use the large egg as a standard size? A recipe will call for a larger size, if its necessary. You will end up with a very different cookie if you use the wrong size egg. Maybe you always thought you were a terrible baker, but as it turns out, you've just been using medium eggs. Voila, begin anew.), milk (whole vs 1% vs skim makes a difference - I think skim is the milk of the devil, and I drink 1%, which usually ends up in my recipes, but I had some half and half in my fridge when I made these last week, and I used that with some 1% milk, and I was quite pleased. See what you like best.), baking powder (not soda!), and salt. I just learned something about salt from a friend: table salt, because it is such a small grain, is more soluble and incorporates more quickly and thus is less in your face, while kosher or sea salt is a larger flake and doesn't dissolve well, which makes for noticeable salty pockets in a cookie: this can be effective, as I found it to be in a citrus shortbread, but in this sugar cookie, I'd go with table salt. Cooks Illustrated can tell you even more about salt, should you be on the tip of your seat reading about the stuff. Actually, you could probably also read Mark Kurlansky's Salt, though I haven't read it. Someone read it and let me know if I should. Oh, and you need powdered sugar, but we'll get to that later.

Okay, sugar cookies! 

This recipe is weird about its butter. 2/3 cup. Why is that weird? How many of you cut your butter based on the numbers on the wrapper? Ever noticed that 1/3 cup of butter is 5 and 1/3 tablespoon? Bringing it back to 4th grade fractions, you can't get 2/3 cup out of one stick of butter. So you must use one stick of butter plus 2 and 2/3 Tablespoons of butter from another stick. Or at this point, you could decide to double the recipe, which would make your butter halving much easier. 

2/3 cup butter + 3/4 cup white sugar go into a mixing bowl. Beat it, beat it, and beat it some more, on a medium or medium high speed. Start on a low medium speed though, otherwise you will have butter bits all over your kitchen. If you're familiar with how long you aerate butter and sugar for a cake, think that way, and if not, just mix until it almost looks whipped. 

Beat one large egg, one teaspoon of vanilla, and four teaspoons of milk into this mixture. Think light and fluffy thoughts. 

In another bowl, combine your dry ingredients. Pro-tip: whip your flour in its container or bag with a whisk to lighten it up before measuring. When you dip your cup into the flour, don't pack it in, and level it off with the back side of a knife, you want the light touch with flour measurements, otherwise you're going to get a dense, overly floury cookie. Add two cups flour, one and a half (1&1/2) teaspoons baking powder, and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Whisk these together, then add to the rest of the ingredients. 


Incorporate the flour mixture with a spoon, then once it's slightly blended, use your mixer on low-medium to combine the wet and dry completely, or just finish this step all by hand. Don't over mix here, but make sure all the flour is mixed in. I usually mix for about fifteen seconds, turn off the mixer, use a spatula to turn over the dough and get all the flour off the bottom of the bowl, then mix it for another fifteen or so seconds. 

Dough is done and delicious, but soft! Stick it in the fridge for about an hour, covered, to stiffen up a bit. It will still be sticky when you take it out, but you'll remedy that. 

In the meantime, prep your work area. Clean a counter top space, or tape down parchment or lay out foil, whatever works for you. Mix equal parts flour and powdered sugar in a bowl. I never measure this, I just eyeball it. Sprinkle a lot of this mixture over your workspace, and make sure it covers the surface completely - nothing will annoy you more than rolling out your dough and cutting your cookies just to find you can't lift them off the work surface onto the cookie sheet, because they are stuck to the counter. 

When your dough is chilled, scrape a hunk of it out of the bowl, put it on your work surface, lightly pat the flour / sugar mixture all over it, then roll it out into a thin (maybe 1/4" thick or even slightly thinner if you can) circle-ish shape. Cut out your shapes. Use a spatula to get under your cookie and move it to the cookie sheet. Sometimes this is challenging. Deep breaths. It might help you to pull the unused dough off the shapes first.

Put your cookie sheet in a 375 degree oven for 6-8 minutes. I always find they take eight minutes, if you want that light brown edge, which you most definitely do. Remove them to a cooling rack with a very skinny metal spatula.

Enjoy. They are amazing. Thanks Granny, for helping people like me everywhere kill with the kindness of perfectly simple sugar cookies. You were a great lady, thanks for leaving stuff like this to help us keep your spirit alive. 

Sausage (the one you've been waiting for)

Looks good, right? I hope this post does not turn out to be the pinnacle of the blog, since it's only post number five, but it's entirely possible, considering the clamoring from friends near and far for me to get this up. Sausage. Sausage, sausage, sausage. Alex thought we should make some sausages. I was pleased about this, as I was planning to give him the KitchenAid food grinder attachment as a Valentine's present, because who doesn't equate food grinding with love? He then said, I think we should make them for the Super Bowl party, and I thought, well, I can't withhold the food grinder until the day of love (isn't every day a day of love, really?), and so we went to get it together. He purchased another attachment, the sausage stuffer-helper thing (pretty sure that's its actual name), and we were all set on crucial kitchenware. We had each been searching the internets for sausage recipes and were not coming up with much. Having used the Charcuterie books a couple weeks prior for the mustard making fest, we again drew upon it for inspiration, and this time found a chicken tomato basil sausage. Having had little luck online, I went for a browse in cookery - sausages at the public library, where I found Bruce Aidell's Complete Sausage Book. This title gave us our pork sausage recipes: a sweet Italian sausage (which, by the way, repurposed itself nicely as pizza sausage for last night's dinner), and a bratwurst straight out of Wisconsin. 

So let's start at the very beginning, it's a very good place to start (thanks, Fraulein Maria). Crucial kitchen items: You will need a food grinder of some type (I'm referencing the KitchenAid mixer attachment throughout this post), the sausage stuffer if you plan to encase your sausages, lots of little and large bowls for prep, some 409 or other bacterial killer for the germ fest you're about to create, saran wrap, and if you're a germaphobe like myself (hey, I once poisoned my entire family with chicken), food safe disposable gloves. I love them.  Oh, and also two people, because there is pretty much no way you could do this successfully without a partner.

If you're going to make all three sausages (but let's face it, who spends five hours making sausage on a Saturday besides us), you're going to want to find a good butcher for your meat needs, because they will be diverse. We purchased our meats at Gartner's, a super-friendly, enormous butcher shop up on Killingsworth. 

Here's what you should get at said shop:

4.5 lbs pork butt : before putting through the grinder, cube this

1 lb veal shoulder (they only had pre-ground veal, but it worked just fine)

2.75 lbs pork back fat (mmm mmm good) : before putting through the grinder, cube this. It will probably come frozen from the butcher, let it sit out, but keep it somewhat frozen or it won't hold it's shape in the grinding process

3.5 lbs skinless chicken thighs : before grinding, cube this (and if you're making chicken only sausage (no back fat), keep the thigh skin on, and as much fat as possible on the meat)

You also need medium hog casings, and if you don't know what these are, you might not want to, but I'm going to tell you anyway ... hog casings are pig intestines, and these stretchy, strong, thin wonders are the traditional way to make sausage links, and they look like this:

I won't lie, the stomach does turn just a slight bit when you give them a rinse (these are prepared and salted by butchers, you rinse out the salt before use), and there is a bit of shock when you realize how slimy and difficult to maneuver they are, but once all that's out of the way, it's really not an issue. Some recipes also instruct that you soak them for 30 minutes or longer in lukewarm water before rinsing, which I'm pretty sure we did. This makes sense, as they become more pliable this way, and less likely to tear. Alex got ours at Zupans, a little market in this town with a nice meat counter. Apparently the counter guy was surprised at such a request. I guess at home sausage-making is not yet all the rage amongst Portland foodies. Fun fact: Did you know that breakfast sausages are traditionally encased in lamb casings, because their intestines are smaller? Neither did I, neither did I. 

So meat is out of the way, but you will need lots of other things, most importantly, spices. 

 

-lots of fresh ground pepper (If you're going to bother making sausages from scratch, you should bother to hand grind the pepper. You will be glad you did, even if your wrist isn't).

-lots of kosher salt

-lots of minced garlic (again, take the time to mince it yourself, that jarred stuff really isn't the same)

-lots of fresh basil, enough for four Tbs

-two Tbs fennel seeds

-oregano, fresh or dried (we used fresh.)

-a tiny bit of allspice 1/8 tsp - get this in bulk

-one tsp of mace (mace!) - again, this is a bulk spices buy

1 tsp ground caraway seeds

1/2 tsp ground ginger (starting to wonder where some of these go?)

The rest of the ingredients are pretty much pantry staples:

sugar

milk (we used whole)

dry red wine (we used Yellowtail Syrah, if memory serves)

1/2 c diced roma tomatoes (the recipe calls for fresh, but it is a travesty to use fresh romas in February, so we used canned, to great effect)

sun dried tomatoes, reconstituted in water, or just buy the ones packed in oil so they're soft. (I used Trader Joe's oil packed sun dried tomatoes in a different recipe recently; they were tart, sweet, and wonderful, highly recommended)

red wine vinegar, chilled (I really like Pompeian : I'm not a fan of generic store brands when it comes to these kind of vinegars, the flavor just isn't there)

 Sweet Italian Fennel Sausage from Bruce Aidell's Complete Sausage Book

3 lbs pork butt

3/4 lb pork back fat

1/2 c dry red wine

4 cloves garlic minced

2 Tbsp fennel seeds

1 Tbsp fresh ground black pepper

4 tsp kosher salt (note! this sausage was VERY salty. I'd reduce by at least a teaspoon in the future)

1 tsp dried oregano (we used fresh, and used about 2 tsp fresh chopped oregano)

1/8 tsp (really, a pinch) ground allspice

I like to mix all the spices together in a small bowl, because it's just easier down the road when you are covered in raw sausage bits. Listen on the salt thing. The salt was intense - definitely better loose on the pizza than in sausage form.  Measure your wine and have it ready. Put a bowl under your grinder. To prep the sausage, Alex cubed and combined the fat and the butt, then fed that through the grinder (there are two grinding plates - 3/8" and 1/8", use the one with larger holes) on a low medium speed (I think 3 or 4).  

After this, we added the spices and the wine, then mixed it by hand, and I don't mean with a spoon, I mean with our hands, or Alex's hands, anyway.

Stuffing the sausage: I am not going to explain this step in the next two recipes, since it's the same each time. Remove the food grinder from the mixer and attach the sausage stuffer piece to it, which entails removing the grinding plate and fitting the sausage stuffer onto the grinder. If you're challenged by the way things work, like how gears go together, for example, or removing a windshield wiper blade (as I, sadly, sadly, am), you should either read the directions or pawn this off on your partner in sausage making. So once that's together, put it back on the mixer. Your casings have been soaking, so give them a rinse (harder than it sounds), and push the entire casing onto the stuffer, which is a long hollow cylinder. Tie a knot at the tail end of the casing. Turn on the mixer and start feeding the sausage through the grinder again, it takes a minute to get the feel of the sausages going into the casing, but once you get it, the sausage link comes together pretty quickly. You want to have a plate to coil the sausage onto, because at this point it will just be one long sausage. Once you've finished pushing it into the casings, tie off the other ends of the sausage, then pinch a space in the link at about 4-5 inch intervals, twisting them around multiple times (again, pliable!), to create the links. There is a specific technique to this, which I never quite figured out, but it didn't really seem to matter too much. Once your links are all twisted, use kitchen shears to cut them apart. They're ready to be cooked, refrigerated, or frozen. See, easy!

A note: What I found most interesting about this sausage is how dark it is, which I suppose is from the red wine, but it's an unusual color, different from what I have seen at the meat counter. Don't be alarmed. Onward!

 Sheboygan Bratwurst : I never liked brats, until I had these. Hello. Eat them with the last post's English pub mustard. You won't be sorry.

1.5 lbs pork butt 

1 lb veal shoulder (again, we used pre-ground veal, we don't know what cut it was from, but it was delicious)

1/2 lb pork back fat 

1 Tbsp kosher salt

1 tsp sugar 

1 tsp freshly ground black pepper 

1 tsp ground mace

1 tsp ground caraway seeds (I used a mortar and pestle to grind / crush my caraway seeds)

1/2 tsp ground ginger

1/2 c milk

This is a slightly different prep than the Italian sausage. Mix the spices together in a small bowl. Cube the fat and butt, mix the spices with the cubed meat, then grind with the small grinder (1/8"). Obviously, if you have veal shoulder, you will need to grind that too, but we just ground the pork, then added in the ground veal. Then add the milk, and mix / knead with your hands until everything is combined. Repeat the above sausage stuffing. 

Chicken Sausage with Basil and Tomatoes (from Charcuterie) note: this was the most time consuming of all the sausages due to the fineness of the meat, it was very sticky and challenging to work with, be forewarned and take deep breaths when it comes to stuffing time.)

3.5 lbs boneless skinless chicken thighs 

1.5 lbs pork back fat : if you don't want pork in your chicken sausage, you can leave this out, but if so, leave as much fat as possible on the chicken thighs. Maybe you even want to throw in some other chicken fat, I don't know, but 1.5 lbs is a lot of fat, just saying.

1.5 oz kosher salt ... I definitely recommend weighing measures that call for ounces, you'll get a far more accurate measure than if you try to make a conversion to table/tea spoons via the Google machine or something

1 tsp freshly ground black pepper 

1.5 tsp minced garlic 

4 Tbsp tightly packed chopped fresh basil 

1/2 c roma tomatoes, diced : canned worked for us, but if they were in season, I would have chosen fresh. 

1/4 c sun-dried tomatoes, in oil or reconstituted in water, diced

1/4 c red wine vinegar, chilled

1/4 c extra virgin olive oil 1/4 cup dry red wine, chilled (we used syrah)

I combined all the herbs and spices, including the garlic in a bowl. We tossed this with the cubed meat and fat, then poured the romas and sun dried tomatoes into the bowl and combined everything. Since we were doing all the sausages at the same time, we combined this, then put it back in the fridge, as we wanted to grind the two pork sausages before we did the chicken. If you're just making the chicken sausage, put a bowl (preferably your KitchenAid mixing bowl, you'll see why in a second) set in another bowl containing ice to keep the meat cold under the grinder. 

Remember again how important cleanliness and refrigeration is during this process. Keep your meats cold and your work area sprayed down with 409 or food safe what have you, because the meat and its potential bacteria will end up in many places, like on your cabinets, your floor, the nooks and crannies of your KitchenAid.

Use the small plate (1/8") to grind the chicken mixture. Here's where it starts to get more labor intensive. Put that KitchenAid bowl of meat under the mixer, with the paddle attachment attached. I can't remember if you have to remove the grinder at this point, but I don't think you do. So, mix the chicken on speed 1 (low) for about a minute then while it is still on, add the wet ingredients: the vinegar, wine and oil. Speed up the mixer to about a 4 (medium-ish), and mix about another minute, until it comes together and looks sticky. It will definitely be sticky.

These recipes all mention that you should fry a little hunk of sausage to check flavors and adjust the seasoning if you need to, but we didn't do that, and this turned out lovely, so the recipe seems to work.  But if you're an adjuster, this is the time to make the adjustments.

After you've finished this process, put the sausage in the fridge while you get the stuffer ready, which you already know how to do from the earlier instructions. Turn on the mixer and start feeding the sausage through into the casings. This is a two man process, no doubt, and the texture of the chicken sausage makes it exceedingly difficult to push through. Happily, this sausage is excellent loose as well, so if you don't want to stuff it, you don't have to! It made its way into biscuits and gravy and an excellent pasta dish in addition to being grilled for the Superbowl. It's really an excellent sausage. 

WHEW! Lengthy. Congrats if you've actually read this far. So anyway, that's sausage, or at least, our pretty successful attempt at three homemade sausages. Surely there will be more, after all, Spring and Summer are almost upon us. I'm curious to know how it goes for you, and if you can find actual veal shoulder in your part of the world.  

-T