More Charcuterie (Saucisson, a'la Pepin)

More sausage...

I got a Jacque Pepin cookbook for Father's day, and there was a series of recipes in there for a country saucisson.  A pork sausage with garlic, red wine, and seasoning.  It looked good, so I got out the grinder, a kilo packet of frozen pork shoulder, some fatback, and went for it.  One of the recipes called for chanterelles or similar.  I didn't have those, but I did have dried porcini, which I like the flavor of, so I used those.   It's a mild cure.. add curing salt, cure in the refrigerator for 2-7 days.

I wrapped the sausage in plastic wrap and foil, per the recipe, and let it cure.  It's been a week now, so time to test it.  I saw the recipe for saucisson in brioche (sort of a fancy pigs in blankets when you get right down to it) and decided to make it for breakfast, although it's really more of a dinner or lunch dish, but I was hungry this morning.  I didn't want to make bread dough for the brioche, but I did have puff pastry in the freezer, so I figured I could wrap the 2"x10" log o'sausage in the puff pastry and bake it.

OK.. it tastes pretty good.  Distinct red wine taste (I used a cheap Apothos red which isn't great to drink), some heat (I think I put some pepper in), nice earthy porcini taste.  Very, very different than the usual breakfast sausage or my standard spicy Italian sausage.  The puff pastry, though, pulled away.  Probably need bigger vents to let the steam escape during baking. Or maybe do smaller chunks of meat, or stretch the pastry, or, gosh, actually make brioche dough?

Froze the rest.  Pepin's recipes call for either roasting next to potatoes and onions (yum), or poaching in hot water and using with potatoes to make a potato salad.  So I vacuum packed the remaining three logs, and we'll see how it goes.  Some sausage freezes better than others.

The andouille worked great.. I did a peppers and onions saute with andouille this week and it was wonderful.  Next batch needs more heat, though.

Love that vacuum packer.. I also  packed 4 pounds of pork chops cut from a 8 pound loin that Sally got at Costco.  The other 2 pound chunks are going to become Kassler Rippchen and Canadian Bacon.  The former needs to be smoked before curing, the latter needs curing before smoking. I need to get some juniper berries, and I need 3 or 4 days to do the curing.  Sort of a German and Canadian take on what you can do with a lean pork loin!

Sorbetto ( Fruit Gelato)

I'm converging on recipes and processes for fruit gelato/sorbetto.  Technically, if it doesn't have dairy, it's a sorbetto, not a gelato; a southern Italian thing, as opposed to the northern thing where dairy rules.

In any case, Cooks Illustrated had a recipe for raspberry sherbet and that clued me in to a couple key facts.  Number 1: pectin is your friend; Number 2: don't churn too long.   I still have my refractometer, but so far, I've been going by taste.

Pectin (of which there is a lot in some fruit, and not much in others) helps maintain the structure so it's creamy and doesn't freeze into fruit icecubes. And, yes, there's  "yellow box" and "pink box" pectin, for "sugar added" and "no sugar added" jelly making.  The former expects to see TONS of sugar (as in cups per pound of fruit) and apparently, there's a whole complex sugar, pectin, gelling chemistry.
Not too much churning, because air whipped into it makes ice foam, not creamy sorbetto.

The goal is saturated taste, and the sobetto not melting into juice when it sits on the plate/bowl. (although Saddle Peak cheats on this by serving their sorbetti on a block of ice with depressions in it).

Strawberries don't have much pectin (as opposed to raspberries, and even less than apples). So I made a first batch with strawberries, sugar, and "add sugar pectin" because that's what I had.  about 5/8 cup sugar for a couple pounds of strawberries.  Zap it in the food processor until smooth, then spend 10 minutes ramming it through the chinois. (something I learned in cooking class at the Athenaeum.. get that little ladle out and beat it through the screen).  It was great, taste wise, but froze rock hard after a day.

Try #2.. got pink box pectin (processed to require less sugar, apparently.. it's on the web, google pectin and you'll find out more than you want to know). Spun up some fresh strawberries (bought yesterday) in the processor, churned it this morning, and it's freezing now.

Also did a raspberry according to the Cooks Illustrated recipe this morning, beating it through the chinois as well.   Just churned it, so it's freezing (curing) now too.

We'll see how it comes out.   Raspberry on the top, Strawberry on the bottom.

Next, up: real gelato with dairy. Caramel, chocolate, vanilla (vaniglia), etc.