Sausage (5 page)
Authors: Victoria Wise
Serve right away, accompanied with the corn bread.
Chorizo, at home in many cuisines, appears with multiple ethnic faces from Spain and Portugal to Mexico, South America, and the Latino-inspired cooking of the American Southwest. It can be stuffed into hog casing and used fresh, or briefly aged in the casing to dry out and intensify the flavors. Sometimes it is smoked, becoming more like a salami in texture. Often it is used fresh in bulk for dishes that benefit from a hit of red and spice. This version comes from Anzonini, a flamenco guitarist and world-class chorizo maker, who generously offered his recipe to Pig-by-the-Tail. We made tons of it, and it was always special! On chorizo-making day, the links were hung on the baking-tray rack for a few hours to dry and compact. The dangling sausages festooned the kitchen like chile-red curtains. It was a spectacle of hospitality and appreciated, judging by the number of customers who came to purchase some to take home when they were “done.”
MAKES 2½ POUNDS
2 ancho or dried New Mexico red chiles, stems and seeds removed
1 cup water
8 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
6 ounces salt pork, finely chopped
2½ pounds ground pork
3 tablespoons pure chile powder, preferably ancho
1 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
2½ teaspoons kosher salt
In a small saucepan, combine the dried chiles and water and bring to a boil over high heat. Decrease the heat to medium and simmer until the chiles are quite soft, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cool for 10 minutes.
In a food processor, combine the chiles, ¼ cup of their cooking water (reserve the remaining water), and the garlic and process to a fine paste. Add the salt pork and process until amalgamated.
Place the ground pork in a large bowl. Add the chile mixture, chile powder, pepper, 2 teaspoons of the salt, and the remaining chile cooking water, and knead with your hands until thoroughly blended. Cook and taste a small sample, then add the remaining ½ teaspoon salt, if needed. Leave in bulk and shape as directed in individual recipes or stuff into hog casing. Cover and refrigerate overnight to firm and blend the flavors.
Sauté or grill, or cook as directed in individual recipes. (The uncooked sausage will keep in the refrigerator for up to 5 days, or in the freezer for up to 6 weeks.)
Chipotle Cream
A glory of black beans, in addition to such qualities as their beauty and healthfulness, is that they don’t need to be presoaked: they easily yield to softening when boiled straightaway. Then, they are ready to accept all manner of embellishments, such as sausage, Mexican spices, and sweet-sour-hot chipotle cream.
SERVES 6 TO 8
Black Beans
1½ cups dried black beans
4 cups water
1½ teaspoons kosher salt, or more to taste
Chili
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 yellow or white onion, chopped
2 large cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1 pound
Chorizo
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 tablespoons pure chile powder, preferably ancho
1 teaspoon chopped fresh oregano or ½ teaspoon dried oregano
1 chipotle chile in adobo sauce, minced
1½ cups canned tomatoes, with juices
4 cups water
Chipotle Cream
¾ cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons sour cream
2 chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, minced
To prepare the beans, rinse, pick them over, and place in a large saucepan. Add the water and bring to a boil over high heat. Decrease the heat to maintain a brisk simmer and cook uncovered, adding more water if necessary to keep the beans floating freely, until tender, 1¼ to 1½ hours. Stir in the salt and use right away, or let cool and refrigerate the beans in their cooking liquid for up to 1 week. (The beans can also be cooked in a pressure cooker. Place in the pressure cooker with water to cover by 1½ inches, cook for 35 minutes after coming to pressure, and then let stand for 10 minutes to allow the beans to finish cooking as the pressure subsides.)
To make the chili, heat the oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add the onion, garlic, chorizo, cumin, chile powder, oregano, and chipotle chile and cook, stirring occasionally to break up the sausage, until the juices are deep red and bubbling, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the black beans and their cooking liquid, the tomatoes, and the water and bring to a boil. Decrease the heat to maintain a brisk simmer and cook, uncovered, until the mixture has a stewlike consistency, about 40 minutes.
While the chili cooks, make the chipotle cream. In a small bowl, whisk together the cream, sour cream, and chiles. Set aside.
To serve, ladle the chili into large bowls, and top each bowl with a dollop of the chipotle cream. Pass the remaining chipotle cream on the side.
Omelet, frittata, egg tortilla—all are different words for essentially the same thing: eggs mixed with vegetable and/or meat bits and cooked into a cake or pancakelike round. The advantage of this version is that it follows the Spanish or Italian custom of baking the assembled dish. That means no intimidating calisthenics to flip the cake to cook the second side. I serve this informal dish in its cooking skillet, but it’s also easy to lift it out onto a platter.
SERVES 4 TO 6
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 or 2 red or Yukon gold potatoes (½ pound total weight), peeled and cut into ½-inch dice
¼ cup finely chopped poblano (sometimes called pasilla) chile
¼ cup finely chopped yellow or white onion
6 ounces
Chorizo
8 large eggs
1½ teaspoons kosher salt
Preheat the oven to 425°F.
In a 9- to 10-inch skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the potato, chile, onion, and chorizo and cook, stirring to break up the sausage, until the vegetables are wilted, 2 to 3 minutes. Remove from the heat.
Break the eggs into a large bowl, add the salt, whisk to mix, and stir in the vegetable-sausage mixture from the skillet. Pour the mixture back into the skillet, place in the oven, and bake until the eggs puff up and a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean, about 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool for 5 minutes or so before serving.
Cut into wedges and serve warm or at room temperature.
Mexican meatballs are typically made with a mix of pork and beef (or veal) and include bread crumbs or rice to plump them and egg to bind the ingredients. From there, seasoning variations abound: garlic and/or onion, or not; herbs and/or spices (usually cumin and oregano, sometimes mint); elements such as raisins and/or olives (a Peruvian variation); and so on. Zucchini, the “special ingredient” I use here, was suggested by Mexican cooking maven Diana Kennedy. It lightens and freshens the sausage in a way I find pleasing, so I use it for my basic recipe.
MAKES 1 POUND
½ pound ground pork
½ pound ground beef
½ cup
fresh bread crumbs
3 cups grated zucchini, grated on the medium-size holes of a box grater
1 teaspoon ground cumin
½ teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon kosher salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 large egg
Place all the ingredients in a medium bowl, and knead with your hands until thoroughly blended. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour or up to overnight to firm the sausage and blend the flavors.
Form into balls and cook as directed in individual recipes. (The uncooked sausage will keep in the refrigerator for up to 3 days, or in the freezer for up to 1 week.)
Mexican Meatballs in Toasted Garlic–Ancho Chile Broth
In many Mexican marketplaces and town plazas, the aroma of garlic soup wafts from nearby restaurants, beckoning as you shop, promenade, or just wander and gawk. It’s an ancient soup, dating from the time the Moors introduced a brothy concoction to the Iberian Peninsula, which the locals thickened with pulverized almonds (
Chicken and Almond Meatballs in White Gazpacho
). In the New World, the soup was re-created to include tomatoes and dried chiles. That rendition came to be embraced by lovers of Latin fare from the coast of Spain to the zocalos of Mexican towns to the American cities of the Pacific coast. It is an ardently delicious, deep red, beautiful soup that brings with it a blessing of health to the diners, and is blessedly easy to make.
SERVES 4 TO 6
1 pound
Mexican Meatball Sausage
, formed into walnut-size balls
2 large dried red chiles, preferably ancho
7 cups water
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil, plus more as needed
10 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
12 baguette slices, ½ inch thick
1 cup canned tomato sauce
¾ teaspoon kosher salt
2 tablespoons heavy cream, whipped until thick
First, make the meatballs and set them aside in the refrigerator.
To prepare the chiles, stem them and shake out the seeds, leaving the pods more or less whole. In a small saucepan, combine the chile pods and 2 cups of the water and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Cover and simmer until plumped up and soft, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cool until the chiles can be handled. Lift out the pods and reserve the water. Slit open each chile, scrape the pulp off the skin, and discard the skin. Add the pulp to the reserved water and set aside.
To make the soup, heat the ¼ cup oil in a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, until beginning to turn golden, about 1 minute. With a slotted spoon, transfer to a large pot. Working in batches to avoid crowding, toast the bread slices in the same sauté pan, turning and adding more oil as necessary to keep them from being dry toasted, until lightly golden on both sides, 1 to 2 minutes for each batch. Transfer to paper towels to drain. When all the bread is toasted, set the slices aside.
Again working in batches to avoid crowding, brown the meatballs in the same pan over medium-high heat, adding oil as needed, until golden all around, about 5 minutes. Transfer to the pot with the garlic as you go. Add the tomato sauce, the remaining 5 cups water, the salt, and the reserved cooking water with the chile pulp to the pot and bring to a boil over high heat. Decrease the heat to maintain a brisk simmer, partially cover the pot, and cook until the garlic is soft and the meatballs are tender, about 20 minutes.
To serve, ladle the soup into individual bowls. Garnish each bowl with 2 or 3 toasted bread slices and a dollop of the cream.
Tomatillos are a member of the nightshade family, which includes New World tomatoes and potatoes and such Old World relatives as eggplants. Although those wide-ranging kin have become familiar around the globe, tomatillos remain something of a country cousin, not much appreciated or grown outside Mexico and its neighbors to the south in Central and South America and to the north in California and the American Southwest. Tomatillos are an everyday must in Mexican cooking and dining, however, especially for one of Mexico’s great table sauces,
salsa verde
. Here the sauce, usually used as a dip for tortilla chips, becomes the medium for simmering meatballs. Make this recipe in summer, when tomatillos are in season. Canned versions are available, but they should be reserved for thickening
chile verde
and the like, much as okra is used in southern cooking.