How the Sausage Gets Made

There seems to be limitless material on which to make dirty jokes about sausage.  The shape?  “Bursting” sausage?  C’mon, you’re smiling!

Friday’s demo was on the fine art of charcuterie, the making of sausage, terrines, pâté, and the joys of excessive pork fat.  The dish for our practical on Monday morning is Boudin blanc (white sausage) with apples.

As the Chef slipped the sausage casing over the extruder funnel, nearly everyone in the class had a smirk on their face.  “Some of you may have done this before in your life.” said the Chef with his characteristic deadpan face and thick French accent.  Giggles all around.  “Working in charcuterie, I mean.  What did you think I was talking about? ” 

The dish doesn’t, on the face, seem to be overly difficult.  That said, most people have never made sausage and there seem to be a lot of ways to screw it up.  Texture problems? Bad.  Air pockets?  Bad.  Poaching too long/too hot?  Get ready for exploding sausage.  Sausage needs a sensitive hand with the right pressure and some confidence, rather like…. oh, never mind….;-)

In other news, my turkey roulade on Thursday morning came out okay, but I think I lost a few points for the egg white being a little unevenly mixed in my farce fine – a fact that becomes notably more obvious when the farce is tinted yellow from a hefty dose of saffron. Couscous was not bad.  I actually enjoyed eating this one, which can’t be said about every dish.  I’ll remember this dish too because I have a lovely saffron stain on the right cuff of my jacket.

On Friday morning we made rainbow trout stuffed with wild mushrooms with a side of fresh pasta.  I’m a little chagrined that my pasta wasn’t better – I’m too used to my hand-cranked pasta roller that I’ve  become a little sloppy with the rolling pin.  Trout was okay, but I need to work on de-boning without making a mess.  Slightly burned my sauce as I was a few minutes from plating.  Guess what?  The Chef could taste it.  You can run from mistakes it seems, but you can’t always hide them. 

We also made another dish: Quenelles de brochet (a fluffy pike fish dumpling-ish thing) in what was supposed to be Sauce Cardinal (a lobster infused Sauce Béchamel).  But the production kitchen didn’t have lobster stock, so we used a basic fish stock that made it a “white-on-white” dish.  I thought it was kind of icky and certainly not worth the effort or a picture.

Another interesting item of note.  The school has just hired two more Chefs – one for Pastry and one for Cuisine.   We’ve seen the new Cuisine Chef a few times - he's helping out and shadowing the Chef in our classes.  Not sure which classes he’ll be teaching, but new faces = new ideas, so that's always a good thing.

So I have the weekend to think about Boudin blanc and come up with my own unique plating ideas.  It’s rare that we get a demo on the Friday and wait for the practical until Monday.  I’m hoping a few days of quiet snowy weather will get me inspired.