GOURMET SAUSAGE
Review by Barb & Ron Kroll
Sausage - Recipes for Making and Cooking with Homemade Sausage
(Ten Speed Press) ISBN 978-1580080125 158008012X
You don't need sausage machines or sausage making equipment to make your own sausage. Victoria Wise gives home sausage makers more than 75 recipes for breakfast sausages, appetizers and main dishes.
Besides sausage recipes, she provides information on sausage seasonings, sausage stuffing and sausage supplies, including hog casings and caul fat.
Not all recipes in this sausage cookbook require casings. You will learn how to hand-shape sausage balls, patties and meat loaves, and how to use cabbage, lettuce and grape leaves, or rice paper, instead of hog or sheep casings.
How to make sausages
Organized by main ingredient, from beef sausage to pork sausage, this 164-page cookbook tells you everything you need to know about making fresh sausage.
You learn the percentage of fat need for sausage meat (15 to 20%) and the differences between pork back fat, leaf fat and salt pork. You also learn how to make vegetarian sausages from tofu, quinoa, bulgur and brown rice.
Each chapter of Sausage begins with a recipe index and an introduction. In Poultry Sausages, for example, Victoria Wise notes that you can add schmaltz (chicken fat) to moisten chicken and matzo meatballs.
Homemade sausages
Recipe introductions provide more information. In her Armenian lamb and rice sausage for stuffing leaves and vegetables recipe, Victoria Wise explains that sausage stuffing wrapped in leaves is called sarma, while vegetables stuffed with sausage are called dolmas.
Following each recipe for making sausage, the cookbook adds one or two recipes with the homemade sausage as the main ingredient. For example, after making the chorizo sausage recipe, you can use it to make black bean chili with chorizo and chipotle cream.
Sausage photos by Leo Gong supplement color photos of ingredients and sausage dishes, like Creole sausage, shrimp and oyster gumbo.
Sausage-making equipment
In the Appendix, Victoria Wise describes the size of grinding plate holes needed in manual or electric meat grinders, if you decide to grind your own sausage meat. She also explains that you can buy sausage stuffers on the Internet or you can also use a long-nose funnel for sausage stuffing.
Sidebars provide information on sausage ingredients. In one, you learn that niter kibbeh is ghee, or clarified butter, seasoned with spices and onions. Victoria Wise uses it to make Ethiopian spiced butter in her South African sausage with collard greens recipe.
Sample sausage recipes
American breakfast sausage. Pork and chestnut sausage. Sage and bourbon whiskey sausage with cherry tomato chutney. Toulouse sausage stuffed duck legs with white beans. Sweet Italian sausage. Minestrone soup with Tuscan sausage and arugula pesto. Honey glazed fresh Polish sausage with sauteed apples. Spicy garlic sausage. Greek sausage in pita sandwiches with cucumber mint yogurt sauce. Pork and water chestnut sausage. Turkish-style lamb sausage with fig and fennel seed marmalade. Merguez sausage. Turkey and pistachio meatballs in creamy chevre sauce.
Contents
Introduction- Ingredients
- Store-Bought
- Homemade
- Pork Sausages
- Beef Sausages
- Lamb Sausages
- Poultry Sausages
- Seafood Sausages
- A Trio of Vegetarian Sausages
Index
Author
Victoria Wise has published 13 cookbooks and gardening books, including American Charcuterie: Recipes from Pig-by-the-Tail.