Landjaeger & Pate

The landjaeger has been stuffed and fermented for about 2 days now. A mixture of beef and pork with spices, stuffed into hog casings. (we had fun with the extra casings.. now I know where balloon animals came from).  I don't have official wooden landjaeger molds, so I squished them between a couple sheet pans for 48 hours.  The bacteria inoculation wants to ferment at 80F or so, which is convenient since it's been 80 in the garage for the past few days. 

You're supposed to dry the sausages for a bit, so we did that today, giving me a chance to take a picture.  Tomorrow evening, after another 24 hours of fermentation, (and I might add, they smell like they are fermenting.. a distinct acidic odor), I hit them with low temperature smoke for 4-6 hours, and then they go to cure for a couple weeks at 50-60 F (e.g. the temperature of the wine).

I got ambitious yesterday.. watching the DVD that comes with Jacque Pepin's new book I saw how you can bone out a chicken while keeping the skin intact to make a ballotine. It actually worked (although I'm not nearly as proficient and speedy as Jacque).

And, I made a pate (my first)... a pork tenderloin with a pork forcemeat around it, with a garnish of andouille. Tastes pretty good.

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!