According to British and Irish tradition, black pudding has an esteemed place next to the bacon rashers, sausage links, fried eggs, mushrooms, fried tomato and fried slice in an old-fashioned greasy spoon breakfast, but its almost complete absence from the American breakfast table is confusing, especially given our known preference towards an injection of cholesterol to kick-start the day.

This phenomenon might be partially explained by the less euphemistic title of “blood sausage” in use on these shores. The more descriptive terminology acting as a major deterrent. In fact, blood sausages are an integral part of the diets of many European countries — the morcilla of Spain and French boudin noir, among them — and their former colonies in the new world, especially South America, with the Cajun country cooking of Louisiana and the Canadian province of Quebec being the only areas of North America to demonstrate any real enthusiasm for these dark mystery bags.

Supposedly a corruption of the English word “pudding”, boudin are common throughout France in various colors and flavors, and in many ways the term refers to fresh sausages in general, with the more familiar cognate, saucisson, reserved largely for salumi/preserved sausages. Boudin blanc, made with veal and pork are commonly seasoned with quatre epices (white pepper, ginger, nutmeg and cloves) and closely resemble many of the sausages I remember growing up in England where pale colored pork sausages, flavored most commonly with either apple or sage, were a weekend breakfast table favorite. However, it’s the boudin noir, made with pigs blood, grains, fat and seasoned with white pepper and nutmeg that I am most interested in, perhaps, because of a fascination with just how one makes sausages out of congealed pigs blood, but, principally because their gruesome reputation belies their extremely delicate texture and taste. Their rich color, unique minerally-flavor, and loose, unctious mouth-feel, is obscured by our collective fear of blood, though given the current inexplicable popularity of all things vampire-related, whether this is shared by younger generations is unknown.

In France, there are various centers of boudin production, but it is relatively easy to find throughout the country. The meal above is a take on one we ate in the charming medieval town of Arras (more famous for its wall-hanging carpetry than its gastronomy) in north-eastern France around New Year 2009. The potato gratin and green salad of that meal being substituted here with puy lentils and some charmingly minute steamed vegetables – zucchini in this case – and pickled pattypan squash. The latter picked up during some holiday impulse buying at a supermarket outside the nearby town of Noyon, and the jar breached for this special recreation. This dish was extremely good, though the boudin did deflate somewhat during cooking which I took to be an indictment of the particular sausage-maker’s art rather than a facet typical of blood sausages in general. Should you wish to avoid that possibility altogether though, I would certainly council frying thick slices of boudin on a hot plate, or similar device, until crispy on the outside. The contrast with the lentils and the soft interior of the sausage would be even better than what’s pictured here.

Many of European countries have a one-pot dish into which odds and ends of the beast and various cheap vegetables are thrown, and cooked until all components sit fall-apart tender in a rich broth. Examples include Lancashire hot-pot in the UK, the famed French pot-au-feu, and the various cocidos of Spain.

Depending on where you’re eating one of these stews, you may find it all served together – the pot placed in the middle of the table for diners to dip a ladle into and fish for the tastiest morsels – or in a series of courses beginning with a soup course of the broth (caldo), followed by a vegetable course, and finally the meat.

With the long-awaited advent of spring, we realized that our opportunities for making such a dish were melting away with the last rimes of dirty snow. So, armed with a foot of fresh morcilla found at the (ultimately rather disappointing) Essex Street Market, a pound of dried chickpeas, and several large slabs of pork belly (courtesy of the very magnificent Mitsuwa Japanese supermarket in Edgewater, NJ), we decided it was now or not until the fall.

Everything we’d read suggested making cocido took both a long time and wasn’t easy. Happily, neither of these proved to be entirely true, and if you’ve got a couple of hours to spare one weekend, you can, with minimal preparation, make yourself a wonderfully flavorful three-course meal for 6 people without even breaking a sweat.

Though research suggests it doesn’t conform exactly to a typical Cocido Madrileño, this preparation closely resembles the cocido we ate in Madrid last year, and, ingredient-wise, is very similar to an Asturian-style Cocido Montañes with the exception of using chickpeas (garbanzos) instead of white beans.

For us, in spite all the porky deliciousness of the meats, the broth was the best part of this dish. It was incredibly delicious and was so infused with the flavors of all the ingredients that it was impossible, even in taking a small bit of each meat and vegetable in a mouthful, to get the same flavor.

Ultimately, the best thing about this cocido was not just the great satisfaction derived from a simple, peasant dish, but that it made us feel oddly wistful about the departure of winter. A feeling we did not anticipate at all.

A few months ago I was contacted by a representative of a site called cajungrocer.com. He offered to send us some Cajun treats if we would do a bit of a write-up on their products. Well, what else could I say but “Hell YEAH!”. We had our choice to sample crayfish, turducken or boudin. It wasn’t crayfish season so we mutually decided that wasn’t a good idea and the idea of “roadtesting” a turducken (which I honestly still don’t understand the purpose of… sorry if you’re a fan) skeeved me out and boudin is right up our alley so we settled on sampling that.

I was hoping to have this review done much earlier than now but when I explain to you why it took almost 2 months to taste-test, you’ll probably understand why. A week after giving the “hell YEAH” go-ahead to the cajungrocer.com rep I received a knock at the door – it was a UPS man holding a large styrofoam cooler. Not a ‘holds a six pack’ size cooler, but a giant one. As ripped the protective tape off and lifted the cooler’s lid, my heart leaped and my stomach grumbled. Inside was not one, not two, NOT THREE but FIVE different types of boudin (not to mention a crawfish appetizer we have yet to try!). So I hope now you can understand why we needed to wait until now to write this product review. Too many snausages, too little time.

Now, it is important to give you some background and history on Cajun Boudin – not to be confused with the French version you may have tasted before. Both are technically a version of boudin blanc (or white sausage), but the French version is often made with a combo of pork (or chicken or veal) and pork/chicken/veal bit’s (ie: liver and heart) along with milk, cognac and spices, thus making it a bit softer and more delicate to handle. After the French Acadians were forced by the British to leave Nova Scotia in 1755, they headed south and ended up making their homes in the various bayous and back-country of Louisiana, specifically in the area which is now called Acadiana or Cajun Country. Cajun boudin is obviously related to the French version but the recipe changed a bit to represent what was available and plentiful in their new land – pork and those lovely hog bits, cayenne pepper and rice – all stuffed into the hog’s intestines. These Cajun boudin recipes have been passed down from generation to generation since and they are not all created equally.

The center of Cajun Country in Acadiana is the town of Lafayette (see map below) and, supposedly, if you go there, you’ll see plenty of signs pointing you to the many, many places that sell boudin. It could be a restaurant, a guy on the side of the road or a place near a gas station but they are everywhere. And, according to my intense research, locals could give two flying pigs less if they are eating their boudin from a guy in a gas station or off some fine china at a nice restaurant – if it’s good, they’ll eat it. And again, according to research, the Cajuns call a Dr. Pepper and a link of boudin a Cajun Breakfast. Nothing screams healthy breakfast like a visit from the “Doctor” in the morning!
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Although we were sent alligator, shrimp and crawfish boudin from cajungrocer.com, I discovered that these are newer concoctions and are not traditional. Purists aren’t turned on by these “newfangled uppity” types but I must say – they were fabulously delicious and tasted exactly like you’d think. Traditionally there are a few things to consider when eating a Cajun Pork Boudin:

1. Do you like it wet or dry?
2. Do you like it spicy or mild?
3. How about chunky insides or mashed?
4. Do you like it with liver or without?
5. Do you want more meat or more rice?

The thing is, you can think about these questions while eating a boudin but you’re not going to be asked them by your boudin seller! There are various combos of all of these types depending on the family recipe. I think I’d like mine dry, spicy, chunky, with liver and more meat. You?

One interesting fact is that boudin is usually eaten as finger food and often thought of as a Cajuns version of fast food – eaten either by biting directly into the sausage or by squeezing the insides of the boudin right into your mouth. Grilling boudin is just starting to gain popularity in Cajun Country but usually it is stewed or braised. Besides being served with a Dr. Pepper in the morning, it is also often served with pork cracklins (fried pig skin), saltine crackers, hot sauce and beer – this sounds like my type of meal. Boudin can be put between two slices of white bread for a sandwich, in an omelette or made into boudin balls (deep fried boudin). We decided to eat the pork boudin grilled with some spicy mustard and the alligator boudin over yellow hominy and lentils and paired it with a sweet and spicy tomato sauce.

Even though we were in Brooklyn, I thought the boudin that cajungrocer.com sent to us was fabulous – full of flavor and perfectly spiced. Eating the Cajun boudin made me wish that I could experience not just the food of Louisiana, but the culture surrounding the food. Luckily, we still have a huge pork boudin with pork cracklin’ left to eat and, when we do, I’ll be throwing on some Satchmo, drinking some cold Abita (if I can find some) or a Dr. Pepper and dreaming I was in Lafayette. In fact, if you are every heading to Lafayette, Louisiana, check out boudinlink.com for reviews and an interactive map to find some of the best boudin around.

Thank you, again, cajungrocer.com – we highly, highly recommend your services and your delicious, authentic products.

Check out some other posts you may enjoy:

• Pork Roll and Scrapple – The Dirty Culinary Pride of South Jersey/Philly
• Fabada: A Mortal and Corporal Sin – But Worth It!
• In Defence of Sandwiches (White House Subs, Atlantic City)
• SANDWICH DE MERGUEZ (BAGUETTE FILLED WITH MERGUEZ SAUSAGE, FRENCH FRIES AND FRIED LEEKS)
• MORCILLA (SPANISH SAUSAGE) STUFFED GRILLED SQUID WITH A SPICY SAUCE

An article in the latest issue of Gourmet magazine addressed the oft-ignored, but very real, dilemma of the carnivore that is the slaughter of animals for human consumption. We touched on this issue briefly a while back in a post on Provencal rabbit stew as I had a succession of rabbits as pets growing up and initially found it difficult to decide if I could eat rabbit given these very friendly relationships in my formative years – what my sister refers to as the dilemma of whether or not to “eat your friends.”

In this Gourmet article, two Brooklynites go shopping in search of goat meat in order to recreate some goat tacos they’d eaten in northern Mexico. After searching high and low for the cut of goat they need to re-produce this dish authentically, they end up at Madani, a halal butchers in Ozone Park, Queens, and there, they witness the slaughter of their chosen goat in the traditional halal method of throat-slitting, and subsequently, they experience some philosophical issues relating to mortality, meat-eating and the preparation of the goat tacos.

For a rather more comprehensive discussion of the ethical slaughter of animals, check out Halal: The Original Ethical Meet Eating at EatDrinkBetter.com where the gist of the piece is that halal-style slaughtering methods are the most humane to be used anywhere – showing as they do proper and due respect to the animal before, during and after its death.

Never having witnessed the killing of an animal for food using halal, kosher or any other method, and therefore not knowing the look in its eyes as the knife is drawn across its throat, nor having watched the life (and blood) ebb out of it, I was both fascinated and made a little fearful by this article. For me, it wasn’t that I had a sudden ethical problem with the killing of animals for food – far from it, in fact, it brings me great delight on a daily basis that animals are killed so I can eat them — rather I felt that I should also witness, first-hand, the death of at least one animal that was to play an important role in my dinner in order that I too could appreciate this sacrifice in all its horrific reality.

Little did I know that within hours of having read this article I would be faced with almost exactly this opportunity. And, when I say almost, I mean that whereas the guys in the Gourmet article only watched while someone else dispatched their goat, in my case, I was to be cast in the role of the grim-reaper.

Regular readers of this blog who look at our photographs carefully may have noticed a certain black and white (a so-called “tuxedo”) cat loitering in the background, paws poised to take a swipe at whatever’s in focus should our backs be turned momentarily. This is our cat Windsor and, being our cat, she is a gourmet and a gourmand in every sense of the word that is applicable to felines. A lover of all things dairy (including a recent obsession with the Italian hard cheese Piave), Windsor has a well-rounded palate and is just as likely to nibble on avocado and tomatoes (she is also an amateuse of mushrooms sauteed with garlic and parsley) as she is to be tempted by pieces of fish skin and lamb bones, and of course, this pleases us no end that our pet shares our hobby (and, to a degree, our waistlines).

However, we are not so enamored when her tastes expand to feral beasts. Indeed, several are the times when we have been awoken before dawn on a spring day to the pathetic, plaintive final shreiks and whimpers of some unfortunate sparrow hatchling that Windsor has been tormenting. After which she continues this agonizing soundtrack serenading us with cheerful and proud meows to alert us to her macabre victory over a defenceless prey. This is the cue for yours truly to drag himself out of bed and step very carefully through a dark apartment – now littered liberally with tiny feathers – into the kitchen to retrieve the dustpan and brush in order to usher the late creature to its final resting place as respectfully as I am able to at 4am.

So it was with an extreme sense of foreboding last week when my wife called me at work in the late afternoon to tell me that Windsor had outdone herself and had left us an altogether larger gift this time. Happily, she had left this one outside our back door, probably because she couldn’t carry it inside.

It was a large grey squirrel – about two or three pounds (1 – 1.5 kilos) in weight, I would guess. Fully grown with a large bushy tail and some very serviceable-looking buck teeth. The kind of urban squirrel that we had been cursing as vermin for months for digging up everything we planted in our small garden regardless of the amount of chicken wire we tried to protect it with. Ironically, it was precisely the same kind of squirrel that, because of this, we had been trying in vain to encourage Windsor to be more territorial about and go after.

The moral of this story, though, is not be careful what you wish for. No, it’s actually make sure that when your cat does what you want it to and brings you the animals you’ve been telling it to deal with, that said animals are actually dead. This one was gravely wounded but had certainly not yet shuffled off its mortal coil, and it was this liveliness that so bothered my wife. After all, what the hell do you do with a half-dead squirrel?

Hurrying home on the subway, I wasn’t able to come up with a good answer to this question. It seemed to me that the easiest (and most cowardly) approach was to hope that at least Windsor had done enough to mortally injure the squirrel and that it would succumb to its wounds mercifully soon. However, were this not to happen, I was left to wonder just how long I could mentally deal with the fact that a kind of cute squirrel was dying a slow and agonizing death just steps away from where I was trying to sleep.

When I got home however, one look at the stricken creature gave me my answer — I could probably sleep quite well, or if not well, then certainly better than if I had to dispatch the thing myself. My wife though, ever my moral compass, directed me towards a heavy snow-shovel and suggested invitingly that I “be a man about it.”

I shall spare you, gentle reader, the finer details of just how I sent the poor squirrel off to meet his maker, but suffice it to say that both Windsor and I could learn a lot about humane methods of slaughter should this situation recur. If it did, not only would it occasion a great and heroic blog post about killing ones own food, but it would also necessitate an investigation of recipes for squirrel, the idea of which for now, at least, rather turns my stomach…

“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”
- William Blake

Have you ever thought, as you sit red-faced, breathing shallowly, “just… one… more… bite”? Have you ever then taken that extra bite and thought to yourself — in your blood-starved brain — “maybe, after all, I could manage another one”? And, finally, upon swallowing said final mouthful and feeling a previously unknown thickness on your tongue, have you ever thought, “perhaps I’ve overdone it”? It is at this point, as your mouth slowly stops salivating, your breath becomes labored and characterized by sharp exhalations and sighs intended to revitalize your flaccid organs, and your belly feels so tight and distended that if it weren’t for the shocking quantity of food you’ve just ingested (and several other flabby bodily areas), you might resemble a starved Ethiopian child, that you begin to understand why gluttony was included among the seven deadly sins.

Such was my state of mind as I sat, gravely concerned that I might actually suffocate myself internally as my stomach pressed up hard on diaphragm and lungs, at Casa Portal restaurant in Madrid, after a meal that would make a man’s recommended weekly caloric intake appear somehow unlikely to provide sufficient nourishment. The culprit you ask? Well, apart from my own greed, gluttony and propensity to exceed normal physical boundaries, the culprit was fabada. Fabada Asturiana to be precise. The famed bean and pork stew of the Asturian mountains (Picos de Europa) in northern Spain.

As earlier posts have described, I passed a vacation several years ago traveling in northern Spain and found it to be a formative experience. The food, the landscape, the culture and the climate had a profound impact on me and have kept me returning to Spain as regularly as possible given the intervening years in which I’ve gotten married and moved to the United States. Enjoying fresh seafood, doused in garlic, parsley and olive oil, and washed down with non-carbonated local cider in the beautiful, secluded harbor town of Luarca is one particularly evocative memory. And so it was that when we were in Madrid recently I wanted to recollect these memories, so we spent most of a morning walking across the city in search of an Asturian restaurant that had been recommended to us.

Our meal began with a selection of Asturian appetizers, including a tunafish and tomato empanadilla, a whole steamed morcilla, and a large cooking chorizo simmered in cider, accompanied by chewy bread and a liter of Asturian cider. My wife was then presented with what can only be described as a pond-sized bowl of fish bisque, that we shared but could not finish. Thankfully, a pause of fifteen minutes offered some digestive respite to our already extended guts and allowed our moistening brows to cool. However, when the final assault came, it was one that an hour-long intermission would not have adequately prepared us for.

My fabada arrived in a bowl of similar proportions to my wife’s soup course, and in it, along with the delicious softened, yet still toothsome, large white beans, came half of ANOTHER cooking chorizo, half of ANOTHER morcilla, and an entire pork chop. Maternal warnings of eyes-bigger-than-belly swam in my head as I plowed in, loosening my thickly greased palate at regular intervals with an excellent Crianza from Navarre. The beans were, well, like butter, and the various pork products, each delicious and flavorful in their own way, but the star of the dish, and indeed the entire meal, was morcilla.

This blood sausage, sometimes made with rice, sometimes with grains, which we Brits would class as black pudding, is common throughout Spain and, I’m sure, is widely derided by most tourists — even those with gourmet aspirations — for being disgusting. As I began to labor through the final mouthfuls, it crossed my mind just what levels of dietary deprivation had forced the inventors of morcilla to collect an animal’s blood and congeal it with fat, salt and grains, and fashion it into a sausage for preservation and sustinence later on. In the same way, I often try to imagine the back-breaking work of so many grape-pickers during the annual vendanges as I take my first sip of a newly-opened wine, in order to better appreciate the effort and craftsmanship that goes into the things I enjoy most. However, in this instance, my reverie for Spanish food culture was interrupted (and would not return for a while) by a lack of blood to my brain, as it flooded south to my upper intestine to begin absorbing the porky appetizers of the previous half hour.

An uncomfortable period followed (I know not how long), during which my wife was kind enough to gently pat my limp hand and fan my flushed and fevered cheeks with a napkin, before I was able to even contemplate the short walk to the bathroom — the pressure having eased above was now pressuring a full bladder below. Even upon staggering back to the table and slumping ungraciously into my seat, I was unable to consider taking a glass of refreshing water so full was I. Apparently, until this point, I had been unable to articulate my suffering, but chose this moment to confess that not only might I have overdone it, but that I might also be experiencing a previously unheard of “pork overdose” that could turn out to be prejudicial to health. My wife replied pithily that at least I was advancing medical science by my gluttony.

Eventually, my bloatedness subsided enough for me to leave the restaurant and lurch slowly around the shopping district near the Goya metro stop, ashamed everytime my sagging and pallid features were reflected in a store window. And, lest, you think, gentle reader, that you might be prepared to risk a similarly harrowing experience in the daring pursuit of local specialties, you should know that as a result of my over-indulgence at lunch, I was unable to eat anything for the rest of the day and so missed an entire evenings’ worth of tapas.

If these were the immediate penalties of gluttony, the medium term ones have been even worse. I try in vain to shake off my fabada-induced weight gain each midday at the gym and, so far, I see no change in my girth. Yet, in spite of all this (self-inflicted) suffering, I still feel that it might well have been worth it. One only learns one’s limits by testing them, no?

Unsurprisingly, we have not yet had the courage to make our own version of fabada since returning to the States, though we intend to do so before winter is out. In the meantime, our good friend Nuria at Spanish Recipes Pic by Pic recently posted an authentic fabada Asturiana recipe on her site, which we will be putting through its paces just as soon as we can face it.

THIS IS AMY (the wife) TO SAY SOMETHING: The story you have just read above is not only true, but not even exaggerated. I really have never seen this man react to overeating (which we too often do, unfortunately) the way he did after consuming the fabada this day in Madrid. It was mildly hilarious, but kind of scary as I didn’t know how to say “Where can I get his stomach pumped” in Spanish. We hope to make our own fabada soon since we finally were able to find morcilla for sale in a speciality store. I’m just hoping it doesn’t have the same effect on the man this time.

If you are interested in reading more of our posts on Spain, please check out:

• The REAL Cocido of Spain
• Jamon, Jamon
• Pictures of Madrid
• Unusual Tapas We Ate in Madrid
• Tame Tapas We Ate in Madrid
• Cabrales Cheese: It’s a Bit of an Animal
• Vermut (Vermouth): Rediscovering an Old Classic
• CHORIZO, CHICKPEA AND POTATO SOUP