Doug bought me (us!) a Kenwood Chef for Christmas, we call it "The Beast" and if I'm lucky it gets to sit on the bench (Doug has a clean bench policy that is occasionaly enforced). I've used it to make bread, Challah, chapattis and pancakes....it's simply awesome! It also came with a glass blender attatchement but the quiet call of the meat grinder is what really attracted our attention. In Australia, I wouldn't dream of making sausages, but in Switzerland, I think it has become necessary. Wurst is what you buy in Switzerland, there is something called "Italian Sausages" which look more like "sausages" but considering how expensive meat is here, somehow I don't think they are saving the best cuts for these products. Everything we have tried has been a bit disappointing, if not a little scary, so we bit the bullet and ordered the machine :)
That was the easy part.
Suasage making in Switzerland doesn't seem to be the done thing. Finding the casings for the sausages has been frustrating and really a bit embarassing. We don't have a local butcher here in Adliswil so I asked the butchers at the large supermarkets for 'wursthällen' and told them I wanted to make my own wurst. This is not terribly hard to say in German but all I got was a blank look and then after further clarification, the feeling that I had asked him to chop up his pet dog for me......'We don't have that sort of thing here!'.
All the meat here is chopped and processed to the nth degree. Nothing has a bone (except what is either shanks cut up or ox-tail - very expensive) in fact you buy shiny clean bones seperate! At Christmas time there was no ham on the bone and Pork roast doesn't have crackling.....it's crazy! Somehow I don't think the butchers (Metzgerei) take delivery of whole carcasses and then chop them up, it arrives that way and they package and sell it.
Finally I was given the address of a Metzgerei in a rather out of the way place that looked promising. I wrote to them and asked if they had schweindärme (pig intestines....I didn't think I would have much luck with collagen here) and Hallelujah, they did! I can't believe I was getting excited about finding schweindärme. I now have a bundle of pig intestines and 4 kilos of pork in the fridge. I'm just waiting for the machine to arrive, and the courage to untangle the casings.
Here are the recipes I want to try (from - TheSpicySausage.com):
Hot Italian Sausage
2.26 kilos pork
1-cup cold red wineç
1-cup chopped fresh parsley
5-tsp salt
1-tbsp garlic powder or-4 to 5 garlic cloves, minced
1-tbsp fresh ground pepper
3-tsp cayenne
5-tbsp fennel seed
2-tsp crushed chili peppers
5-tbsp paprika
Seems to have all my favourite ingredients. Might need to add speck to boost the fat content.
Anyway, we'll see.
The Meat grinder arrived today! I've just finished making Italian suasages from 2 kilos of meat.......quite a lot really! The fennel seeds were rather strong so I reduced 5 tbs to 4 and mixed sweet and hot paprika together. I bought some uncooked speck (for the fat content) and then forgot to add it :( oh well.
The whole process did take all afternoon, but I was also reading the instruction booklet for working the machine. The recipe is rather hot and spicy, so I could reduce the hot paprika content, and also crush the fennel seeds. Here are the sausages cooking:
The other recipe I tried I made up (with some guidance from the internet). Equally Delicious! I also made meatballs out of the spicy Italian sausage mix and it used it for spaghetti bolgnaise with meatballs.....fantastic :)
Sage and onion sausages
2.26 kilos coarse ground pork neck
1-cup cold white wine
4-tsp salt
4- cloves of smoked garlic
1- bunch of sage (and some parsely)
2-tsp crushed fennel
1- onion minced
1 -tsp mixture of nutmeg/ginger/cloves
1-tbs freshly ground black pepper
