Sausage

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Store-Bought

Homemade

Appendix: Grinding Meats and Stuffing Sausage at Home

Index

I ADORE
Ten Speed Press, their style, their expertise, their attitude, the gorgeous books they publish, and, of course, their perspicacity in choosing to publish this one. It was especially gratifying to work with Aaron Wehner, publisher, who spotted this project’s worth, and with Melissa Moore, project editor for this book, and Dawn Yanagihara, end-stage editor, both of whom are unflappably cool and collected and on top of the moment no matter the author’s concern. Also, Sharon Silva, copy editor par excellence, whose keen reading saved me more than once from potential embarrassment, and Kathy Hashimoto, one of the calmest contract-department persons I have ever encountered. And, for such a beautiful book, thanks many times over to Leo Gong, Karen Shinto, Nancy Austin, and Katy Brown.

In addition, I owe thanks forever to those who bolster and encourage me and without whom I couldn’t live in either my professional or personal life. Martha Casselman, my dear friend and former agent before she retired, who encouraged me to get into this crazy business of writing cookbooks and who is still at the ready to help smooth my prose in draft after draft. Susanna Hoffman, dear friend for forty years and sometimes co-author, with whom I have shared many sausage discussions as we developed cookbooks together and learned from each other. Arayah Jenanyan, my beloved sister, who has a palate uncompromised by personal preference and who, from the beginning until the day we closed the Pig, was key in making sure the meats and vegetables in the display case shined clear and fresh, as well as in keeping me and the rest of the shop focused throughout the day. James “Chooch” Potenziani, the master behind the art and finesse of turning out the divine sausages, pâtés, hams, and other charcuterie that made the Pig renowned before the word
charcuterie
became hip in the American food lexicon. Penny Brogden, artist and friend, who energetically lent her artistic sensibility and hands-on effort to the daily operations of making beautiful and delicious food at the Pig. This sausage cookbook has grown from all of them.

I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN FASCINATED
by sausage: how the simple notion of finely chopped and salted meat, primarily pork, has changed over time to include poultry, seafood, and vegetarian variations. But no wonder it has evolved. Sausage does double duty, providing affordable everyday sustenance for the family table and doable, interesting fare for sophisticated entertaining.

In 1973, I opened Pig-by-the-Tail, a French-style delicatessen, in what was to become Berkeley’s famed Gourmet Ghetto. My intent and dream was to bring charcuterie back to the American marketplace, from which it had long been missing. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, a huge variety of sausages were available at local butcher shops. But by the 1970s, little was offered in the way of locally made fresh sausages. Neighborhood butcher shops and delicatessens that had routinely sold their own house-cured hams and fresh sausages had seen their role taken over by commercial enterprises proffering so-called fresh sausages, either laced with the additives necessary to keep them safe to eat or “previously frozen” to keep them “fresh” in transport from factory to supermarket. Such products continue to service a broad range of clients, but they do so at the cost of flavor and succulence.

Yet, the taste for straight-from-the-neighborhood sausages remained. The fresh sausages sold at Pig-by-the-Tail, which were French-style at the outset, in keeping with the charcuterie theme, were an instant hit.
Our selection quickly expanded to include Italian, Spanish, German, middle European, and Russian variations. We turned eastward to the beloved dishes of
kufta
I know from my Armenian heritage, where lamb and bulgur meatballs done dozens of ways were customarily made for family occasions. More sausages were discovered as we moved farther east and south to Syria and Lebanon and then north to the Caucasus. And as long as we were on the road, why not continue to Southeast Asia and China? Or, why not head directly north from central Europe and sample British and Scandinavian ways with sausage? Including all of those sausage permutations in the repertoire was a natural. And our customers loved them.

As early as Roman times, the classical cookery text of Apicius pointed out the myriad possibilities of sausage expressions, from meat to fish to fowl to a sweet fruit-filled version. It is not surprising that Apicius has become a darling of modern food writers and chefs, me among them, who delight in his somewhat freewheeling prose that describes without prescribing or proscribing, leaving plenty of room for innovation.

Following Apicius’s lead as I scouted the world for sausage dishes and delved into their history, I have enlarged my originally limited notion of casings as animal intestines to include wraps and containers of many kinds: scaloppine rolls, vegetable containers (tomatoes, eggplants, bell peppers, zucchini), leafy wraps (cabbage, grape, fig, and lettuce leaves), ready-made Chinese wonton squares for ravioli, and Southeast Asian rice paper rounds for spring rolls. I have also come to embrace the notion of sausages with no casing at all. Balls, patties, and fritters, with or without meat, are now all part of my world of sausages.

Sausages present the cook with an ever-changing landscape of possibilities. Rustic to ritzy, homey to haute, they can be eaten any time of the day: breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner, midnight nibble. Pound for pound, and used either as background or as the star of a dish, they are economical, too: a small amount of meat with other provender can stretch to provide a bountiful meal.

I have tailored the recipes in this book so that no special grinding and stuffing equipment is required to turn out delicious, good-looking sausages. On the other hand, if you want to honor tradition and stuff your sausage into an animal casing—and I often still do for some preparations—the
appendix
provides all you will need to know.

Each sausage recipe includes one or more ways to use what you’ve made, sometimes with one or more simple accompaniments, but most often within a dish. All in all, the recipes are part of a repertoire that began at Pig-by-the-Tail and continues to live on in this book. It is a celebration of sausages and my outside-the-box approach to making them. Enjoy.

YOU DON’T HAVE TO STOCK UP
on exotic ingredients to use the recipes in this book. On the contrary, nearly all the ingredients are familiar and readily available. Here’s what you’ll need for making the sausages and for cooking the dishes that include them. The first part covers store-bought ingredients, and the second describes homemade ones.

Use meats, preferably organic, with a moderate amount of fat. If purchasing ground meat, it should have at least 15 percent fat and no more than 20 percent. If it has more, the texture of the sausage will be too soft. How finely or coarsely the meat is ground is also important. In general, a medium grind is what you want. Lamb routinely comes in a medium grind. Beef does, too, except for so-called chili grind, which is too large to soften into a tender sausage. Ground pork is generally more problematic. It is often excessively trimmed of fat to suit the no-fat mindset that currently prevails, and is too finely ground for making sausages with sufficient texture. Amending pork that is too finely ground with minced fat solves the problem, which is how the recipes in this book return succulence and texture to finely ground lean pork. Or, of course, you can grind your own meat.
See the Appendix
for information on which cuts to use.