[Sca-cooks] blackpudding

Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius adamantius.magister at verizon.net
Sat May 27 15:24:35 PDT 2006


On May 27, 2006, at 5:43 PM, Lawrence Bayne wrote:

>
>
> --- "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius"
> <adamantius.magister at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>>
>>  You could
>> probably locate morcilla fairly easily in some of
>> the same places you
>> find chorizo.
>
> Finding good chorizo is as easy as pulling hen's
> teeth> Even in downtown Caid, you mostly find the
> tasteless, extra greasy, stuff sold in a tube. IF you
> can find a REAL meat counter run by a Hispanic
> butcher, your chances are greatly increased.

I'm aware of the hit-or-miss nature of buying good Mexican chorizo,  
and Stefan has complained about this more than once. I avoid this by  
simply buying chorizo made in the Colombian or Dominican style (Goya  
makes a pretty good product, too, surprisingly enough).

These tend to be firmer, meaty, smoked sausages in actual casings and  
links, somewhere between French saucisson a'ail, Spanish chorizo,  
andouillettes, and pepperoni. A fair bit like linguica, too.

Of course, they're not much like Mexican chorizo, but I don't need  
for them to be. I can get Mexican chorizo here, but I suspect it's  
not the best quality and the other versions of chorizo usually are  
pretty good... and I don't do a lot of Mexican cooking, but do a fair  
amount of Spanish and Caribbean cookery.

> I still
> miss the country style chorizo made in a little store
> between Ventura and Oxnard (mundanely). The butcher
> ground and mixed his own and would only make a 5
> gallon bucket full each day. After aging for 10 days
> he would sell that same bucket and no more. Every
> morning he would place the new bucket in the back of
> his walk-in frig and bring the 10 day old stuff out
> and sell it to the little,grey-haired, ladies waiting
> in line.
> GREAT STUFF!!!

Okay, so it sounds like he was mixing and aging the stuff gently, and  
most importantly, I would guess, he wasn't using scraps of meat with  
soft fat, which is probably the big killer for most cheap sausages.  
The complaints I most often see are of gristly meat and too much  
rendered fat, which you won't get if you're using something like  
blade/shoulder/butt roast, or even belly meat, because the fat is  
white, sweet, and hard when chilled.

I'm assuming his product was also a bit more expensive, but it's  
usually worth it in the end to buy good ingredients.

Adamantius




"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04





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