Fresh Polish Farmhouse Sausage (Kielbasa Wiejska)

The pork shoulders are back on sale, so it’s time to clear the counters and get to sausage making! This recipe is for a much subtler, pork-forward sausage than the fresh chorizo recipe I posted previously but comes from the same cookbook: Charcuterie by Ruhlman and Polcyn. The only change I have made to the recipe is to sub water for wine. Fitting as this is a traditional Polish sausage eaten at Christmas and Easter.

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Chicpea Flour Pan Bread (Farinata/Socca)

I recently did a talk at Berwick about the history, biology and nutritional value of legumes and wanted to punctuate the talk with a snack made entirely of Fabaceae. Not willing to subject the residents to a black bean slider or yet another variety of hummus I opted to buy a bag of chicpea flour (Besan) from the local Mega-Lo-Mart and set to researching a dosa or roti recipe to accompany my talk.


What I ended up on wasn’t Indian at all but a recipe from the Ligurian Coast of Italy called Farinata or alternatively Socca depending on which end of the boot you’re on. It’s incredibly simple to make and the chicpea batter adapts it’s neutral, somewhat nutty flavour to many types of seasoning from fresh rosemary to chilies to (my favourite) a bit of Lebanese Za’atar.

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Fresh Mexican Chorizo

I think just about every household has a “default sausage”. You know, the one you or your loved one buys from the store every couple of weeks. The one type everyone can agree on. It’s usually some mild Italian-job that’s just innocuous enough to sneak into both omelettes and pasta sauce. I know some people who swear by the little breakfast patties as their go-to… Weirdos.

Our default sausage has always been chorizo, and I don’t really know why. Neither my wife or I were ever spice fiends and it’s sometimes hard to get a really good fresh chorizo in Canada. Regardless, we hunted the bright red, coarsely ground and piercingly spicy/smokey tubes of meat wherever we could and stocked up whenever we hit Victoria or the little artisan markets around Coombs.

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