(Le Salsicce fresche)
Make no mistake, this is a holiday dish or for special occasions. Go back 50 years here and the average person ate this once or twice a year. (We don’t have any pigs here, which only re-enforces the importation and thus festive element)
You’ve heard the phrase, eating high on the hog. It’s a reference to the fact that the most tender and lean cuts are on the back of the animal, the part of the pig least appreciated by sausage makers.(Too little fat, too little flavour).
You only need to think of the difference between a duck’s red breast and a chicken’s white to understand how use darkens and flavours a muscle. We’re going to need to split the difference on this one. Ask your butcher for 50% minced (ground) pork belly and 50% shoulder, which should give you the right amount of fat to lean meat, the right balance between the unctuous richness and robust, macho flavour we expect from freshly-made sausages.
Ingredients
Flavour agent (fennel seeds, soaked in anisette, OR, dried sage and black pepper, OR sun-dried tomato soaked until soft in white wine, OR lemon zest and white wine (what we mostly do nowadays). Sausage meat, with ideally about overall 30% fat. Salt, 18 grams per kilo of meat Casings (hog or mutton, depending on size of the funnel on the front of your machine). Your butcher should give them to you for free. Or buy them salted online. Buy the minimal amount as they weight next to nothing when dried. Soak for a day in water if using dried. Our butcher Stefano gives them to use already soft, and for free. Anyone that charges you is suspicious and wouldn’t get my business twice.
Specialty machine: A sausage stuffer. Or alternatively, make patties, which are every bit as good.
Directions
If using, soak the fennel seeds in anisette, preferably uncovered so as to allow the alcohol to evaporate.
Keep everything as cold as possible, even the machine itself. (There is a reason that the warm zones of the world produce little sausage)
Place sausage meat in a large bowl, and add salt as evenly as possible, in one- kilo batches. Add flavour agents, including the liquid, at least a wine glass full. Mix thoroughly with your hands for a minute,
Thread casings on front of machine and follow manufactures instructions. We find that it’s better to make a long coil and then to tie in links after the fact, by selecting the length, then twisting a few turns to make the link. It doesn’t matter which way you twist but be consistent, or your links will start to come undone as you move down the coil.
When ready to cook, cut through the knots to release the individual links. We start them inside in a non-stick sautè pan and then finish them on the grill. If you cook them ONLY on the grill, use a low fire as they will tend to split if you heat them too quickly. We char peppers (capsicums) while waiting for the fire to go down low enough to grill these little beauties.
Notes for Australians and Kiwis. These are made of pork rather than beef and thus will turn white versus red when they are done. Just cut into one to know.
Curious about the effect of your flavour agent in the meat? Make a tiny patty and sautè it and taste it. Adjust before it’s too late.
Wine: A simple rough- and-tumble red, perhaps slightly chilled would be perfect. We often serve our house red, a 15% percent negroamaro, fermented in concrete at ambient temperature. Chilling it puts us in the right frame of mind.
