Tag: sausage

2018 Holiday Guide: Gifts for Sausage Making at Home

Shawn 1 Comment

My wife and I have somehow found ourselves with a bit of time off this holiday season and have decided this is the year to indulge in our strange, shared desire to make sausage. Don’t laugh; I’ve wanted to craft tube meat since I attended the NVICA event back in April and Crystal’s been saying we pay too much for prefabs forever.

So we pooled our meager pre-Christmas funds and went in on a sausage stuffer, not knowing that it takes a wee bit more gear to actually get stuffing. A quick peek through all the charcuterie books on my shelf and a couple eleventh hour Amazon orders later we now have a complete kit for sausage making ready for a holiday sausage party. Read More

Beautiful Things : Notes From the NVICA Charcuterie Workshop

Shawn 2 Comments

“My father told me once that there are three things in life that we must do: Work hard, be honest and make beautiful things” With these words John Van Der Lieck plunged his hands into a dark, shimmering paste of pork liver to the reverent, nodding ascent of a roomful of chefs.

We were in the spacious commercial kitchen of North Island College’s Culinary Arts department for the NVICA Charcuterie Workshop; a two-day journey through the world of salting, curing, pressing and preserving meats. There were twenty or so of us foodservice pros gathered around John as he guided us from whole hog (literally!) to finished product and every critical step in between. Read More

Breakfast of Champions

Shawn 2 Comments

“Breakfast was, on the whole, a leisurely and silent meal, for no member of the family was very talkative at that hour. By the end of the meal the influence of the coffee, toast, and eggs made itself felt, and we started to revive, to tell each other what we intended to do, why we intended to do it, and then argue earnestly as to whether each had made a wise decision.”

― Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals

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Portuguese-Style Kale Soup

Shawn 1 Comment

Caldo Verde1Caldo Verde is the ubiquitous Portuguese soup made from potatoes, thinly sliced kale and maybe a bit of paprika-spiked Linguiça sausage thrown in for a little Shazam! I’d heard the name mentioned in cookbooks and on other food blogs plenty of times, but I’d never researched or attempted to cook this “green broth” everyone seemed so hot on.  Then winter hit, and I got sick, and all I had left in the garden was a single miserable little kale plant to comfort me. Read More