Slayers, Saviors, Servants, and Sex

Slayers, Saviors, Servants, and Sex: An Expose of Kingdom Fungi by David Moore.

No, it's not an exciting romance or adventure thriller but a nonfiction book about fungi by a mycologist from The University of Manchester.  It's an easy, short (152pp), often humorous read that will get you thinking about fungi and maybe a little more interested in them.  I've loved mushrooms for a long time.  I used to collect boletus up at the lake in summer and was thrilled with all the mushrooms at UC Santa Cruz.  Moore doesn't just talk about mushrooms but about molds like penicillin and other members of the kingdom, about its very long history, and about fungi as offering a solution for many of our problems today.  Fungi are the ultimate cleaner uppers, the decayers, so that they should be looked to for bioremediation, rather than the bacteria. 

Bon appetit's Italy issue

So I picked up the latest issue of Bon Appetit and I said, oh great! Italian food! So I start paging through it and I read "how to drink like an Italian", which was interesting. I'll have to pick up some Campari. Then there was an article on a bacon burger (Italian?), and another on boiled peanuts and hummus and Japanese pubs, then one on hollandaise sauce; then one on Houston -- at which point I'm asking myself where is this Italian food?? Then one on salmon, and then finally a little reminisence on an Italian mother-in-law; then one on cinco de mayo; then a huge ad on botox; another ad on Turkey; then a cucumber, mint and basil soda recipe; a big ad on Frei Brothers California wine; an ad on tuna; an article on new jersey asparagus -- I'm beginning to dispair!

Finally on page 102 there's "30 reasons we love Italy" followed by Italian dolce (reworked by American chefs of course) and the rest of the articles on Italy. Fortunately there are few ads here so maybe it really was worth the wait! At least they make it easy to tear out all the ads!

Sausage Recipes

This is as good a place as any to jot down sausage ingredients. Here are also some tips:
1. Keep the meat cold.
2. Cut the meat in long thin strips to grind it.

Emeril Lagasse's Homemade Mild Italian Sausage
Ingredients
3 pounds well-marbled pork butt, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 tablespoon plus 1 1/2 teaspoons paprika
1 1/2 teaspoons toasted fennel seeds
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon freshly cracked black pepper
1 teaspoon cayenne
1/2 teaspoon ground anise
2 tablespoons freshly chopped Italian parsley leaves
3 tablespoons dry red wine
Pork casings, optional

Le gourmet TV Hot Sicilian Style Italian Sausage Recipe
Ingredients:
5 feet medium hog casing
4 1/2 lbs lean pork butt
1/2 lbs pork fat
2 tbsp coarse salt
1 tbsp whole fennel seed (sometimes we grind it, sometimes we don't...)
1 tbsp fresh ground black pepper
Crushed red pepper to taste - 2 teaspoons is a good starting point for your first time making this


Homemade Wisconsin-Style Bratwurst
•4 pounds pork shoulder, cut into 1-inch cubes and stored in the freezer for 30 minutes
•1 pound Pork back fat, chopped and stored in the freezer for 30 minutes
•3 tablespoons kosher salt
•1 tablespoon sugar
•1 1/2 teaspoons grated nutmeg
•1/2 teaspoon coriander
•1/4 teaspoon celery seed
•2 teaspoons ground black pepper
•1/8 teaspoon ground marjoram
•1 1/2 teaspoons dried ginger

Sausages

So Saturday I finally made home-made sausages. I had bought 13.5 pounds of pork shoulder at Costco and I picked up sausage casings at McGinnis's so I was ready. For a long time I had had the equipment: my KitchenAid mixer, the food grinder attachment and the sausage stuffing accessory. I'm not sure what I was waiting for. Maybe inspiration from a simple recipe, which I found in Rosetta Constantino's My Calabria.
It was very simple with sweet paprika, hot paprika, salt, fennel seeds and ground pork. Constantino's mother says that if your hands aren't red after mixing the sausage meat, you don't have enough paprika.


Our first attempt at stuffing wasn't so great, we were using a little funnel for stuffing them and they resulted in rather wimpy sausages. So we compacted the sausage meat so they looked decent and then changed the funnel to the wider one so that more stuffing would be extruded. It was always difficult to find the opening for the casing since they were really thin. But if you fill the 3 foot casing with water, it's easier to gather it up around the funnel mouth.





These are the hog casings soaking in cold water. They came in 3 foot lengths, tied together. You gather the hog casing up around the funnel mouth, turn the mixer on high speed, and start pushing the sausage meat through the grinder.

You need two people to fill the sausages. One to push the meat through the grinder and the other to gradually pull out the casing. After the first string of sausages, we were almost experts!

And yes, we were very proud!

Belly of Paris

I downloaded the kindle application to my new macbook air so that I could download a copy of Emile Zola's The Belly of Paris to read on the flight to Paris. The version I bought is translated by Mark Kurlansky of Cod fame and he provides a nice little introduction. I haven't started reading it yet but will let you know more when I do.