My First Sausage

My First Sausage
Originally uploaded by kattebelletje.

Sausage making is in the air. I knew it. So I bought a meat grinder about a month ago in one of those great kitchen gadget shops. Plus a sausage spout, made of plastic. It looked utterly professional. The meat grinder, that is, made in the Czech republic - and having this sturdy old East European feel to it. The spout was a little more post-1989 but that might be their adaption to modern life.
So I bought meat. But somehow a sausage never materialized. Only mince. Which was OK, but not that exciting. But yesterday, when I was grinding pork meat for the jiaozi (Chinese dumplings) filling I suddenly decided I should try it out. I attached the plastic spout to the meat micer and everything, and forced the ground pork through the machine all over again, got out my pork casing for sausages, and yes! a 30 centimeters of sausage appeared! I tied a very professional knot (see picture) and was ready for frying; only to find I forgot to put any exciting herbs or spices in the mixture. Only salt was in there.
But guess what - after frying, the sausage tasted pretty good anyway! How can just grinding meat and putting it into a casing make such a difference? Sausage-making is one of the arts of the world! Now I am dedicated to try new recipes in the upcoming days; having my Jane Grigson's Pork & Sausage book; and reading one of my favorite cooking blogs worstlog.com.

angel hair pasta with truffle

angel hair pasta with truffle by kattebelletje.

Last Friday I was handed over a fresh truffle, brought to my desk by a colleague of mine, who loves cooking and promised to buy me one at her favorite Amsterdam grocer. The smell of the truffle is something completely unique and overpowering. Some find it disgusting, others rave about its earthy, nutty and hypnotising smell. I put it in an airtight container after coming home. Then I started leafing through my cookbooks to find the perfect recipe; not easy, since the Larousse Gastronomique told me to boil it in wine or stock, and other cookbooks just shut up about it. I did find an interesting story in the Larousse though. They said fresh eggs take on the truffle flavour when being together with a truffle, so I got up and added three fresh eggs to the box. But in the end good old Antonio Carluccio had the recipe I felt like making: pasta with fresh truffle shavings. First I made fresh dough for pasta with 1 egg to 100 grams of pasta flour. I used 300 grams of pasta flour for four people. I let the dough rest for half and hour and used my pasta machine to make the thinnest sheets of pasta, which I then ran through the spaghetti setting, getting the lightest fettucine you can imagine.
I sauteed some slices of (Smokey Al's) garlic in a knob of butter until translucent and added cream. This was not exactly in Carluccio's recipe but I felt I needed some extra sauce, especially since Carluccio must have used the white Italian truffle, which is much stronger, and I was in possession of a French black one.
So I added cream, more cream, salt and pepper and then shaved half of my 11 euros truffle in the sauce. Then I cooked the fresh fettucine for like 2 minutes and poured the sauce all over it. Then, on the plate, I added grated Parmesan and truffle shavings all over the pasta. The pasta was very creamy, very delicious with the parmesan, and with an extra delicious flavour of the truffle, although it didn't taste as strong as I thought it would. I was a little bit disappointed - should I have used more?
Surprisingly, the next day when I cooked the eggs, they had taken on the truffle flavour. It was even stronger than the truffle shavings on the pasta. Strange, no? The Larousse even said you can borrow a truffle overnight and return it the next day - after flavouring your eggs with the wonderful truffle aroma!

Rosso: shrimp and avocado cocktail

shrimp and avocado cocktail by kattebelletje.

Last week, I was invited by Zestz to attend the book launch of Dutch tv-chef and restaurant owner Herman den Blijker. So I traveled to Rotterdam to see what it was all about. The launch was held in one of Den Blijker's own restaurants, Rosso in the Van Vollenhovenstraat. When I turned up I was early, and my early arrival turned out to be very fateful indeed. Five minutes after arrival, I happened to witness the outbreak of a cow, which was supposed to be tied to the entrance of the restaurant to create this rural feelilng. However, the cow bolted and ran off. After being caught by two men, and led back in the direction of the restaurant's entrance, it bolted again and hit three people, smashing a glass table on the go. All three were almost squashed against the wall and fell on the floor; one woman broke a finger, the other two men had bruises all over. It was like a Pamplona scene, very scary! view photoset on Flickr Luckily there weren't many guests around. More than one hour later, I felt happy I had escaped this ordeal by jumping behind a pillar, so the glass of Chardonnay I was given tasted heavenly. So did this shrimp and avocado cocktail. There were other small bites, like a steak tartare on an amuse spoon, a small cup of lobster bisque, scallops on their shells, and fresh oysters cut open by special Oyster Girls. The chef himself seemed not to have noticed the commotion outside his restaurant, nor did he comfort anyone later on. Instead, the poor men suffering the blow of the cow's horns were given glasses of mineral water by the helpful staff of Rosso.