[Sca-cooks] blackpudding

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On May 24, 2006, at 2:02 AM, Stefan li Rous wrote:

> UlfR mentioned:
> <<< I think the 3-year old has eaten more store bought blackpudding
> than malaches, but that is due to laziness and availability (every
> grocery store sells black pudding, but only a few sell blood).>>>
>
> Huh? Obviously there are some differences between the grocery stores
> in Sweden(?) and the United States. :-)  I might be able to find
> black pudding at a specialty store, such as Central Market or maybe
> Whole Foods, but I'm not even sure of that.

As with most products, availability of a quality product is based on  
local demand. I seem to recall your having mentioned the availability  
of both good and bad chorizo in your area, for example, and the  
differences between the two, and most Americans have never even seen  
actual mortadella di Bologna, so have no basis for comparison: they  
only know "baloney" and generally don't like it.

Around here, in my immediate neighborhood, we have reasonably good  
access to blood sausages, with both Irish-style black puddings  
(generally a bit stodgy and heavy, with too many rusk crumbs and not  
enough fat or blood) and a locally-produced, small-industrial-but- 
still-industrial morcilla, which I suspect is one of those things, in  
this case and as with much industrial sausage, you probably don't  
want to inquire too deeply into. But if you like blood sausages, I'll  
say I've never encountered morcilla that wasn't tasty. You could  
probably locate morcilla fairly easily in some of the same places you  
find chorizo.

We also see, depending on where in the area you go, German blutwursts  
(lower in cereal content and higher in fat and blood than Irish black  
puds), a specialty "cold cut" known simply as tungwurst, which is a  
sausage made of cubes of cooked tongue and fat bound together in a  
substrate of blutwurst mixture, put in a large casing, and either  
smoked or poached. I like this one.

We also can find, again, if you know where to look, Polish and/or  
Ukrainian black kishkas made from pork muscle meat, fat, blood, and  
buckwheat groats. The same markets that sell this one also tend to  
sell a bloodless, white version of the same thing.

What I don't ever see here, but am on the occasional lookout for, are  
French boudins noir (which are pretty close to German blutwursts, but  
different from Louisiana boudins, which are, in turn, more like  
morcilla, with rice and rather aggressive spicing), and Northern  
Irish drisheen, which is one of those legendary "scary" foods. As I  
say, I've never found this one, but the recipes all suggest it's made  
from sheep's blood, flour and spices, and cooked in a pan, and is  
probably not too different from Par's evil blood pudding.

Oh, and then we can also buy both raw (frozen?) pork blood and cooked  
pig's or duck's blood, which comes in blocks like tofu in some of our  
Chinese groceries, and is cooked and served in a pretty similar  
manner. I remember it as being tasty but extremely rich: a couple of  
bites went a long way.

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