Home Made Chorizo

I have been messing about for the past few months with various sausage recipes. Some have been fairly successful while others turned out awful.

Last Saturday I decided to have another go. I went to the Spicy Sausage (not a person) and came across a recipe for Chorizo. http://thespicysausage.com/recipes/chorizo1.htm

I had a couple of gigot pork chops, purchased for this very purpose. What is a gigot chop anyway? I always thought it was lamb. That's what it said on the label anyway.

I cut them into bits and blitzed them in a food processor. Not too fine. Mixed in the spices, herbs, salt and the other ingredients including plenty of garlic.

Made a small patty and fried it. The result was fantastic. I was so surprised by the texture. It was exactly like a Chorizo.

I only had a fraction of the meat outlined in the recipe, so had to make adjustments to the quantities. I think I put too much salt in to though.

It was very nice indeed. I tried it with a few things. Eggs did not really work, even though you would thing they would.

I tried them with potatoes and I would have to say they are best friends.

I will definitely make it again. The next time, check it for seasoning as I go, rather then just plonking in the salt and cayenne.

I don't think I will go down the road of actually making sausages in the casings and all that. Well, not at present anyway.

The Spirit Movie

I just saw the Spirit. In general, it didn't think it was great.

I was a great fan of the comics, and thought that they did not do justice to Will Eisner.

Still the effects were great and even some of the visual jokes resulted in a chuckle.

I don't think I would bother watching it again.

Jerd

Sourdough Bread

I made a batch of sourdough starter about 2 months ago. Everything went fine.

I took a while for me to get the hang of using the sourdough starter as a replacement for my normal rising agent which is dried yeast.

I found that it took about 20 to 22 hours for the dough to fully proove before baking. This is not a problem. All it means is that the baking requires more planning.

I made both white and brown loaves. The white was a fantastic product. It seemed like a cross between normal white bread (whatever that is) and Italian ciabatta. It was crusty and chewy with lots of big holes. Hmmmm....

The brown bread product was a different matter. I tried it with both strong brown flour and wholemeal flour. It was quite nice. It was light but not as light as the white. The extra density in the flour, produced a product that was much more crumbly but not crumbly in a good way. The texture of saw dust springs to mind, which I claim that I have never eaten.

The reception of these by the various patrons has been mixed. My brother and the Mater say it is Brillo Pads (Very Nice) where as the Lovely Noodles (My Wife), Pina Pina and Nead (My Daughters) would rather drink from a pox bottle (Not a good thing). I dont actually know what a pox bottle is but I feel that it would not be a very nice thing. My friend Whoolio also thinks it is Brillo and so do I.

I am not sure how long I will continue to go down the sourdough road. It is a bit of a hassle. The sourdough starter need to be looked after at least every 2 days.

I feel compelled (wrongly of course) to only bake sourdough bread. I can probably get therapy for that. I should probably mix the baking styles more, i.e. soda bread, normal yeast and sourdough. That should keep everyone happy, even me.

Feeding the starter makes the starter grow in volume quite a bit. I would say that I have about 2000 mils of the stuff. I am such a cheapskate I hate throwing good stuff out.

Anyway, it died and got washed down to the big sink.

Always good for the biomass of the drains.

Now back to soda bread and dried yeast (mostly) bread.

DNS Problems Not Resolved

Finally, I can access this blog from home. I had an issue with my DNS that I have been able to overcome. Simple really, as it often is.