[Sca-cooks] chorizo

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Robert Downie:
>vhsjvs at gis.net wrote:
>
>>  what about the Portuguese chorizo?  the kind they put in their kale
>>  soup?  I have have many wonderful kale soups on Cape Cod where,
>>  especially in Provincetown, there are many Portuguese families,
>>  descendants of the first settlers who were fisherman.  I dont know how
>>  it differs from the Spanish chorizo, tho.
>
>According to my cookbooks it is different, but they don't go into specifics
>on the qualities of the Spanish one.  The predominate spices are garlic,
>paprika and pimento paste.  These pork sausages are smoked for 12 to 24
>hours.
>
>Friends of our family always used to make their own.  They built a smoker in
>their garage specifically for that purpose.  I can try to get their recipe
>(of course, everyone has a slightly different variation - my favorite is the
>one from the older Portuguese store by my parent's house), not sure when
>I'll get a chance though :-(
>
>Keep in mind chourica comes in mild (doce) and spicy (picante).  In caldo
>verde I prefer the mild one so that it doesn't overpower the more delicate
>flavors in the soup, but the spicy one is really nice pan fried and served
>on fresh bread (yum!).

The last time I was in Newport, I encountered a smoked sausage that I 
seem to recall was chourica, but it was given to me when I 
specifically asked for linguica. I remember the chourica being pretty 
similar to krajana, the smoked, moderately garlicky, coarse-ground 
version of Polska kielbasa (as opposed to siekana, which is the 
fine-ground --and conceptually fine-- inspiration for the 
rather-poorly-executed Hillshire Farms Allegedly Polska Kielbasa). It 
had some paprika or other red pepper in it, but wasn't particularly 
spicy. It seemed to be another in a fairly generic family of garlicky 
smoked sausages, which include Hungarian, French, Spanish, 
Portuguese, South American, and probably North African, versions. 
Which brings me to this question:

Since I went looking for linguica and came back with chourica (it's a 
long story, doesn't bear repeating), how much difference is there 
between them? (I'm not suggesting there's none; I just don't know 
what it is, and figure someone else here might.)

Adamantius