Bangers and Bricks

2010-03-02T18:38:00.000-08:00

Sausages!

I'm no expert but I'm getting better thanks to my friends here,

http://forum.sausagemaking.org/

I create my own spice mixes and recipes.

That's because I know what I want from a sausage and don't really want to use someone elses recipe.

I want to make my sausage,not theirs,that's not saying theirs isn't excellent,it is,it's just not mine,and for me creating your own is what the adventure of sausage making is all about.

My first banger was okay but I didn't mix it enough to get the myosin working.

Myosin is just what happens with the salt in the mix,I use sea salt,you need to work it to get it working to MAKE it work,that's very important.

Later I'll post some recipes.

I made a chicken sausage and they were fabulous,adventurous for a second attempt but by crikey they were good!

I wish I'd made a bigger batch!

Since then I've made more batches of pork sausages and later I'll post the recipes I've used but I've made relatively plain bangers which I like,a breakfast sausage,you still need to add certain spices but not a lot.

I've made sausages with beer(Bishops Finger)and I'm working on using hops if I can after a mate sent me some,very tasty sausages.

But by far my best are the last two batches.

One was with Red Leicester cheese and chives,Oh mate you really have to taste those!

The last one I made I call the "Breaking all the rules sausage".

It's basically the first sausage I made but learning from my mistakes,it's a heck of a good sausage that gave me the taste I was looking for in what I call a fairly plain English sausage.

I used pork butt(fatty pork shoulder)

Salt

White pepper

Nutmeg

Parsley

Thyme

Marjoram

And a generous squirt of lemon juice.

I used very little water and rusk,much less than some recommend but it worked for me,and the lemon juice gives them a lovely "zing".

My equipment is still primitive,a plastic mincer/grinder I was given through freecycle.

I bought some stuffing tubes to fit it.

Now I need to upgrade,I'm hooked on making sausages and plan to make black pudding.

I'll be trying bacon one day,I say not just yet but knowing me it won't be long before I have a go!

So far I've only used collagen casings,I thought they'd be easier for the novice.

Not the best choice,I've used mine up now so I'll be getting hog casings in future.

A random selection of pics,the knots are what you have to do with collagen skins.

The pic on the plate is the chicken sausages,homemade mash but sadly frozen yorkie puds and frozen peas.

Still a good feed though when it's your own sausages.

One pic is the cheese sausages.

The other is the last batch roughly described above,coarse ground twice,you can see the chunks of fat in it.

2010-03-02T17:21:00.000-08:00

Not sure where to start now the blog is up so let's begin with just a few pics of my historic brickwork repair that have been done more recently,later I'll look at the older stuff.

This is a 16th century cottage in Kent.

Looks expensive to repair?

No,it's one of the easiest jobs I've ever done,made all the better when the lady of the house gave us toasted bacon sarnies every morning!

In these out of the way rural areas I normally convince clients to feed us(I buy the food)or let us use their kitchen to knock up breakfast and lunch.

After all,nobody wants their builder disappearing down the cafe all day;)

Not so easy was this Dering window,you only find them in the village of Pluckley in Kent,allegedly the most haunted village in England.

Well I never saw any ghosts but there was a poltergeist of sorts as things kept going missing,but that was the pikeys robbing the site!

I can go into the history of the Dering window but just google it.

They are seen in the TV show The Darling Buds of May which was filmed in the village.

I say this wasn't so easy but that's because the bricks I was given to work with were crap and I had to build several of these windows into a ragstone oast where they hadn't previously existed.

The architect decided not to take advice from someone who knew what they were talking about,i.e. the bricks needed to be made by a specialist local brickworks using similar clay and techniques and was eventually thrown off the job.

He went to a firm in York,their bricks are fine for York but about as much use as a chocolate teapot in Kent!

Every single brick was wrong and had to be recut.

Then they put the scaffold in my way!

2010-02-22T18:06:00.000-08:00

Not sure exactly where this will go yet but the intention is to share my two great loves.
Food,specifically sausages,the good old British Banger,and simple food.
Slow food is a great love of mine and my sausages come into that category because I make my own.
Now that doesn't mean I'm any kind of expert,I'm not,and my sausage making journey has only just begun so recipes from around the world are more than welcome.
I just like my sausages the way they were from the butchers when I was a kid in the 60's,not the muck you get from supermarkets today.
I'm all about traditional food.
Not just British food.

My other great love and something I have 32 years experience of working in the craft is traditional brickwork.
That I've been doing since 1978 when I first started training as a bricklayer,so I've got a fair bit more experience of that than making sausages!
But in both I use only traditional ingredients.
As a building conservationist I use only lime mortar and lime plaster.
I suppose you could call me a food conservationist too!

We've forgotten too many old ways of doing things,the modernized society we live in now is too sterile,too "in the box",or plastic wrap.
Get out of the box.
Get your hands dirty,eat with your fingers!
Eat your food the way nature intended.
Don't play with it!
Don't fubar it with with ridiculous plating and artistic design.
It's fuel pure and simple,all it has to do is look and taste good.
It doesn't have to go in the Tate Modern.
And do the same with old buildings so they'll still be there long after we've gone.
Simplicity works.
The art is in making it work.