Casing the joint

Not for nefarious purposes. For food purposes, naturally, as if thought of anything else manages to penetrate this thick skull.

For awhile now – probably from just before I had to stop eating solid food – I’ve wanted to make my own sausage. Commercial sausage isn’t horrible in most cases, and the store-made sausage from Publix is generally better, but there’s just something special about making something from scratch on your own. It’s the same reason I bake and the same reason I have a (vegetable) garden when I have the chance: it’s about having something grow under your ministrations, as careful with your new creation, as tender (or firm) with it as you would be with a child. The goal is the same: to raise something – or someone – of which you can be justifiably proud, that will serve to nourish others in a variety of ways, both bodily and mentally.

But back to the sausage. Really, it isn’t difficult to do this on your own. A bit time-consuming, to be sure, and temperature control of the meat is important so as not to have the finished product separate into grainy bits when cooked. Casings aren’t even strictly necessary, since the meat can be formed into patties instead. Since we want to have the full experience, however, and since we do have a grinder/stuffer attachment for the trusty KitchenAid, we’ll be giving it a go and stuffing casings with whatever mixture appears on our radar. My mom loves sweet Italian sausage, so I’ve put that first on my list. Other variations will no doubt follow, and I have a sense that I’ll be foisting sausages off on random strangers just to get them out of the house.

If you’ve any interest in sausage, curing, or smoking, I’d highly recommend the book Charcuterie, published late last year. I ran across a mention of it on the eGullet forums about two weeks ago and finally broke down and ordered it last week. It’s a cookbook, how could I resist? An excellent addition to the library.

Now batting: S. Scampi

I decided to deviate from my sister’s request list for Thursday night. Not out of disagreement with anything she would like to see on her plate, of course. Only because while I was picking up a prescription at Publix, I decided to wander past the seafood case. Shrimp scampi with angel hair pasta and bruschetta popped into my mind while I was looking, and since I’m easily swayed by menu suggestions at the moment, I got a couple pounds of shrimp. When I told my sister – the same one tossing out the “can you make that”, the same one who refuses to eat any sort of meat on the bone – she informed me that she doesn’t eat shrimp with pasta. No problem, says I, ever amenable and flexible, we’ll just serve them separately, and you can have the shrimp by itself. Can’t eat it, she says. Too much butter. She also won’t eat bread because she’s trying to watch her carbs for the upcoming swimuit season. This from a girl who has an athlete’s body and weighs maybe 117 soaking wet.

So it will be something else for her. I just need to figure it out. In the meantime, my mom and my other sister will happily share the main dish, and if my brother wasn’t such a rube, he’d be here to enjoy it as well.