Sausage Fest 2009

A diversion. If you will.
While this blog generally focuses on restaurants and the many different cuisines we partake in; this particular Saturday of cookin' was too good to not blog about.

You see, Mr. Broad and Mr. Italianio have been discussing for quite some time now their love of the pig. Their relationship started with a certain Murray's Salumi class. And the conversation evolved from there.

Take us back to a Saturday a couple weekends ago when Sausage Fest commenced.

Mr. Broad went to Meat Market where they sell wholesale meat for restaurants. Obviously. And purchased five pounds of sausage casing through the world wide web. Sausage casing comes in all types of "flavors" but really is a type of intestine for the unfamiliar. Cause who IS familiar with sausage making??

And mind you five pounds of sausage casing produces 120 pounds of sausages. oh. my.

Three different flavors were agreed upon in this very labor intensive process.

Garlic and Red Wine

Brautwurst

Spicy Italian

Oh and a big slab of bacon was made. Why not?

Mr. Italianio came with his sausage stuffer.

Red wine and nice beers in glasses.

Metallica was playing in the background.

Two copies of Marc Ruhlman's Charcuterie book was available.

It really was quite a show.

10 feet of casing needed to get measured out for each batch of sausages. Whoa.

They filled the casing with water to take some of the salt off the casing. You can imagine the jokes with this picture.

Put it in the meat grinder!

This required some wrist technique. Again with the jokes.

Stuff, Stuff, Stuff, and Twist...

Guess what we ate for dinner that night!?

And they were goood.

The anatomy of a sausage

And there they are.

Garlic and Red Wine (back)

Brautwurst (front)

Spicy Italian (right)

Missing- big slab of bacon which needed a week to get cured.

While I was merely an observer and a photographer I can tell you that Mr. Broad and Mr. Italianio will not be making sausages anytime soon. It took a good 7 hours to do all of the stuffin'. And with pounds upon pounds in our freezer weeks later...I think Sausage Fest is going to be more of an annual event.