SC - sausage questions answered! long

[Shayne & Trudi Lynch]

In answer to questions from mark Harris on june 5 ,1997 ,22:16:35

>I'm not sure if I'm willing to try this item or not, but I will show
>my ignorance of cooking and ask some questions:

>1) What do you mean by "poaching" something? In cooking, not hunting.

>2) "others I wrapped in the liver kromeski recipe"? Huh? I thought this
>was another sausage. Do you mean a different casing?

>3) What is "caul fat"? Do you just smear this on the sausage? Or perhaps
>wrap it in some kind of cloth after you smear on the fat?

>4) How would you smoke the sausage? How long? How do you know it has
>smoked long enough?

>Thanks.
>  Stefan li Rous

Sorry it's taken so long to answer your questions.

1:Poaching- to quote my trade school text book,this is the subjection
of food to the action of heat in a liquid held as close to boiling point as 
possible without there being any perceptible movement of the liquid.For most 
purposes, the temperature for poaching is 93-97 degrees centigrade.
   
  (a) The item to be poached must be completely immersed in the liquid
through-out the cooking process.
  (b) The process must be started by bringing the article to the boil, then
reducing the heat to stop the boiling movement and allow the poaching to
take place at the correct temperature.

2: Your right. The liver kromeski is a seperate sausage recipe. For the 
 purpose of the competition I combined the recipes by making the brain 
sausage, then half freezing the liver kromeski filling I wrapped it around
the brain sausage,there creating a two coloured sausage. Liver on the 
outside and brain on the inside.

3:Caul fat is the fat from around the intestine. It's actually like small
worm like pieces of fat held together by a transparent membrain, so you
wrap up the sausages without the need for an other casing.Probably not
very well explained, sorry.

4: When I made the liver kromeskis by themselves, I made them the size of
my little finger, about 4 cm long and about 1.5 cm wide. I have in my
possesion one of the best aniversary presents any-one has ever given me,
that being a small smoke box.(you can pick them up in hardware stores.)
You sprinkle wood chips on the bottom and light a little container of metho
underneath. It takes 20 minutes for all the metho to burn out,you then leave
the box till it's cold and your sausages are done.For the liver/brain
sausage I gave it twice as long.To know when it's smoked long enough is
really a matter of trial and error and how smoke flavoured you like your
sausages.


Liver kromeskis -Omentata

Omentata are made in this monner:[lightly] fry pork liver,remove skin and 
sinews first[2].Crush pepper and rue in a mortar with [a little]broth,then 
add liver,pound and mix.This pulp shape into small sausages,wrap each in 
caul and laurel leaves and hang them up to be smoked.Whenever you want and 
when ready to enjoy then take them out of the smoke,fry them again,and add 
gravy.

APICIUS
cooking and dining in imperial Rome

Clean your pork liver by removing any sinews, fat or veins.Slice the liver
up into 5cm thick slices and panfry the liver in butter until it's just
bruwn on the outside,but still red and bloody on the inside. In a mortar
crush pepper and I think I replaced the rue with sage but I can't remember
at the moment.I then blended the liver in the food processor until it was
chopped finely but a little chunky.Then I added the pepper and sage,shaped
them into little sausages, layed a laurel leaf on the top of each one,
wrapped them in caul fat and smoked them in the smoke box for 20 minutes.
You need to let them sit at least overnight (preferably 48 hrs) in the 
fridge to let the smoke flavour seap through and blend with the sausage,then
fry them up in a pan like normal sausages and I served mine with a nice
red wine gravy.

Aelfthrythe of Saxony
journeyman to Master Charles of the Park
Shayne Lynch   &      Trudi Lynch              
[AKA]  Francois Henri Guyon   &   "He's like a giant boulder:    
       AElfthrythe of Saxony  I   too thick to think and
lynchs at macquarie.matra.com.au I   too heavy to move" (anon.)