The problem with not keeping records

[madbaker]

Next week's Resolution Recipe, also from the war and posted now before I forget more of it: Another Preparation, with intestine.

Take cleaned intestine, washed and scraped in cold and hot water; and salt it; then wash it again with water. Take beaten eggs, grated cheese, saffron, spices and savory herbs minced and ground in a mortar; and put them in a platter or bowl, and mix together; and fill it, and set it to boil until it is well cooked. And when this is done, put it on a spit, or on the grill; and serve it. (Anonimo Toscano, late 14th c.)

6 eggses (about 300 grams)
grated cheese parmesan?
8 threads saffron
salt (I omitted as I thought the cheese was salty enough)
0.2% pepper (I used about 1/4 teaspoon? Not sure.)
175 grams red onion, minced
2 grams fennel seed, plus 1/8 tsp whole fennel seed
100 grams parsley
3 grams marjoram
2 grams rosemary
35 mm hog casings

Grind herbs, onion, and 2 grams fennel seed. Beat eggses and mix in the remainder. Rinse casings as needed. Knot bottom of each casing used; stuff and twist at desired lengths, being careful to not overfill - the egg mixture will expand during cooking. Knot to finish (I recommend double-knotting each end).

Bring a large skillet of water to a low simmer. Carefully ease in the filled sausage and continue to simmer over low heat for 5-10 minutes, until the mixture is set. Remove, drain, and pat dry as needed. Grill over medium heat to brown the skin and serve warm.

The onion, herbs, and spices used here are mentioned in recipe 5 from this collection to make mortadelli and comandelli, other types of sausage.

Sources: Libro della Cocina, Anonimo Toscano. Helou, Ariane trans.

What worked: I ground the herbs, onion, and fennel ahead of time. They mixed easily onsite with the rest and made stuffing easy. That was good planning. I used red onion because it was what I had; I don't know that it added anything a regular onion wouldn't have. I probably could have upped the onion a bit as well, or simply minced it finely rather than grinding to paste with the herbs.

This tasted excellent. It was basically a cheese and herb omelette. I might have been able to up the herbs, since this mix was mostly parsley. The flavor was good, not bland, but I like marjoram and more might accent it well. Pretty color with the green running through the eggses and cheese. I used quite a bit of a semi-hard raw milk Portuguese cheese from the Matos Cheese Factory that we had in camp. It worked really well in the flavors - it's more buttery than Parmesan.

It was popular. (The Queen nommed it right down when she visited. I think she's vegetarian, but she didn't seem to mind that it had come out of a casing.)

What didn't: I forgot to weigh the cheese; "two one-inch wedges" from memory a few days later is not helpful for future reconstruction. I'd omit grinding the fennel seed, where it completely disappeared, and coarsely crush 1 to 2 g in a mortar instead. The uncrushed seed I added didn't mix as thoroughly (which makes a certain sense) and there were occasional bits of concentrated fennel flavor. Grinding coarsely in a mortar would address that.

I boiled the sausages in a large-ish pipkin over charcoal, which required coiling them around each other. They burst in one or two places, but more to the point the knot on the bottom undid itself and leaked a good six to eight inches worth into the water. It boiled without particular harm so I was able to fish most of it out and throw it onto a skillet to cook, but it wasn't aesthetically pleasing. I was pretty careful about not overfilling but I should probably check that anyway. A large shallow skillet might work better.

Will I make it again? Definitely. This is interesting because it's not meat, and if I fill and boil it at home I can bring it to an event and cook it alongside bacon for breakfast. Having house-cured bacon and documented omelette sausage would be tasty, and also quite snotty.

Comments

[lifeofglamour.livejournal.com]

Sounds delicious. And snotty. :-D

[loup_noir]

Sounds delicious. We really need to make more sausage soon. I wonder how long this would sit in a fridge or whether it could be frozen?

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

Apparently scrambled eggs can be frozen (whites get rubbery, but mixed with yolks makes it work better) so I assume it could. Especially if vac-sealed.