madbaker | Here, fishy fishy fishy

This week's Resolution Recipe: Large sausages of pike flesh.

To prepare large sausages of pike flesh
Get raw pike flesh, without scales, skin or bones; for every pound of it, also get four ounces of raw salted tuna belly that has soaked and is not too salty, and it, too, is without skin or bones. Beat both of those the way sausage meat is beaten, for every pound of that mixture adding in half an ounce of fennel seed, half an ounce of crushed pepper, half an ounce of wild thyme either dry and powdered or fresh and beaten, an ounce of oil, an ounce and a half of vinegar, two ounces of salted tuna belly from the biggest part, diced, and one ounce of shelled Milanese almonds; make up a mixture of all that. Have a little linen bag on hand, shaped like a large sausage, and fill it with that mixture in such a way that it is firm; tie it tightly. Give it a brief boiling in red wine, then take it out and let it drain. Hang it in smoke for six hours. When you want to cook it, undo the little bag and cook it on a grill, coating it with oil. Then serve it hot, either cut into pieces or whole.

However, when you want to serve it just as soon as the bag is filled, and you have only just brought it to a boil in the wine, there is no need to smoke it.

You can do trout flesh and fresh tuna flesh that way, as well as sturgeon flesh. From that mixture, without the carrots and almonds, you can make tommacelle, cooking them like the sturgeon ones in Recipe 12. (L’arte et prudenza d’un maestro cuoco, 1570)

24 ounces pike, trout, tuna, or sturgeon
8 ounces salted tuna belly, soaked overnight
1/2 ounce fennel seed
3/4 ounce ground pepper
1/4 ounce thyme
1/4 teaspoon “pink” curing salt
2 ounces olive oil
2 ounces white wine vinegar
4 ounces salted tuna belly, unsoaked, diced
2 ounces almonds, blanched & coarsely ground
2 cups red wine
additional olive oil for grilling

Grind pike or other fish and the soaked tuna belly. Mix in everything else except the wine. Stuff into a long, thin linen bag and tie it up. Bring the wine to a boil in a shallow, wide pan and simmer the sausage bag for 3 to 5 minutes per side. Remove and drain. Cold smoke for up to six hours.

Gently peel the bag off the sausage, coat the fish contents lightly with olive oil, and heat on a grill. Serve hot.

Salted tuna belly comes from another recipe in this collection; like salt cod, it is fish that has been heavily salted for preserving and normally soaks for a day to de-salt before using. Milanese almonds are a type of sweet almond Scappi favored. I used regular almonds. There is no mention of blanching and grinding, but I decided that whole unblanched almonds would be a significant distraction from the rest of the sausage. I found no consistent directions in Scappi’s other recipes involving almonds.

According to Helewyse de Birkestad, "Libra translates to a pound, but was a variable measure depending upon the location. It corresponds to about 348 g or 12 modern ounces. The "oncia", ounce was 1/12 of a "libra" and corresponds to 29 g or about 1 modern ounce." I thus used 12 modern ounces for a pound and 1 modern ounce for an ounce.

I added "pink" curing salt, or a sodium nitrite mix, to help lower the risk of botulism and other bad bacteria that might form in the smoking process. I also reduced the spices as the given amounts tasted somewhat aggressive the first time around.

Sources
Scully, Terence ed. The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi (1570). London: University of Toronto Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-8010-9624-1.

What worked: They were decent smoked fish sausages. Not spectacular, but decent.

What didn't: I should have used a finer weave on the bag - it stuck as the fish had dried out in the cold smoking. I also tried using standard pork casings for comparison and they stuck similarly.

Will I make it again? Meh, maybe. It's not like Casteau's Fish Sausages of Bologna that I find fabulous.