"We must achieve the character and acquire the skills to live much poorer than we do. We must waste less. We must do more for ourselves and for each other. It is either that or continue merely to think and talk about changes that we are inviting catastrophe to make. The great obstacle is simply this: the conviction that we cannot change because we are dependant on what is wrong. But that is the addict's excuse, and we know that it will not do."
—Wendell Berry

Monday 15 October 2012

Chorizo

I made Chorizo sausage yesterday. Chorizo is a classically Spanish form of sausage also known in various incarnations in Mexico and the Philippines also. In essence Chorizo is a pork sausage heavily flavoured with chilli and paprika. But to describe it as such is akin to describing a bottle of '97 Grange Hermitage as old grape juice. Chorizo is so much more! It can be eaten fresh but is more often dried and cured, sometimes even smoked. Treated like this it becomes food beyond belief when eaten in thin slices like the finest Jamon ham.
My recipe uses fresh fiesta chillies and plenty of aromatic sweet paprika as well as garlic and cider vinegar. Packed into a natural (pigs gut) casing. It is then allowed to cure at 4 degrees until it loses all excess moisture before being cold smoked over pink cedar shavings.

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