Monday, February 29, 2016

Chicken Garlic Sausages

I can't get enough of this sausage maker.  It's really easy.  Check it out:

Get some chicken thighs.  The breasts don't have enough fat to work well.

Cut it up to manageable sized pieces, so it will go through the grinder easily.

If I can't get fresh casings from the butcher, I use dried skins that need to be rinsed and soaked.  That will take a while, so we'll start that now.

This is a garlic sausage, so we'll need a lot of garlic.

We'll also lightly grind cumin, coriander, and mustard seed.

Add the spices to the chopped chicken along with red pepper flakes and salt.  Toss to combine.

Here's the grinder.  She's a beauty.

Push the chicken and spice mixture through the feeder, and let the grinder do its thing.

You're done, really.  That's sausage.  But if you want to step it up, add the stuffing tube, slide that skin on, shove the ground sausage through again, tie off one end, and make sure it's feeding smoothly.

That's what it looks like.  Twist it into equal sized links, prick the skin in a few places, and let dry. That's it.

From there, you can fry it up on the stove and serve however you want.  This is with a puree of celery root and cauliflower.


Monday, January 04, 2016

Cheezy Poofs!

We had a taco party.  We went kind of nuts with the cheese.  What to do with the leftovers?  Cheezy Poofs!

Fine, it's a pate a choux.  A Gougeres (pretend there's one of those accent things over the first "e').  Whatever.  Melt a LOT of butter in water.

Dump in a bunch of flour, and start stirring.  This will get really thick.

Your arm will begin to hurt, because then you want to take it off the heat, and add an egg, stirring until it's fully incorporated.

SIX TIMES.

It's going to get both fluffy and stickily heavy at the same time.  Ready?  Add the cheese.  Stir some more.

Dump the whole mess into a ziplok bag and snip off a corner.  Or, if you're fancy, load it into a pastry bag.

Squeeze out puff-sized blops onto a buttered cookie sheet.

Dab each one with a wash of egg and water, then bake until golden.

Try not to look too greedy when you eat them.

PS - thanks to mom for the recipe!