When we lived in London I would walk home from the South Ken station each night along the Fulham road.  There was a small charcuterie along the way, and every so often I would stop in and buy rillettes, which Howard Persky described well as “pate without liver”.  It’s been a long time now, but I remember it being goose rillettes, and, on slices of a crusty baguette it was marvelous.

I’ve only had it a few times since - it doesn’t show up on restaurant menus and I don’t see it in stores here - so when I came across it in Charcuterie (Page 267) I was dying to try it.  Unfortunately, the recipe (for Classic Pork Rillettes) suggested veal stock, made from veal bones, and, as previously mentioned, they’re not easy to come by.

Today was the day!  I cut a pork shoulder (also courtesy of Greenwich Prime Meats) into cubes and cooked it in the broth along with leeks, onion, thyme and celery, and braised it for, oh, six hours.

Following instructions, I then mashed it in the mixer, adding back some broth.  I filled some ramekins, then covered them with rendered pork fat to cool off in the fridge.

It was delicious.  My only reservation was that beating it in the mixer mashed it into a puree, whereas I remembered it having some texture.  I checked on-line, and sure enough, most recipes called for pulling the pork apart with forks.  Charcuterie fell a small notch in my esteem - maybe they’re too focused on home cooks.

Greenwich Prime Meats (the butcher formerly known as Manero’s) finally came through with 8 lbs of veal bones for me.  I first asked them to find them for me in July before we left for Europe, and again before I came back from Maine.  No luck - a run on veal bones.  They also failed me on the fatback again.  What is everyone suddenly doing with pork fat?

I put the bones, herbs, water etc. in the stock pot my parents bought me last year (thanks Mom & Dad!) and simmered it for hours, as per Charcuterie.  Rillettes tomorrow.

Late August I finally forced myself to leave Maine and return to Greenwich.  Some say Sausage was the reason, but JJ needed to be at UVM in Burlington on Friday and I wanted to take him.  Before he left, we decided to make sausage.

We settled on Fresh Sage and Ginger sausages from Charcuterie.  We proceeded deliberately and didn’t have any real trouble.  In terms of lessons learned, we found we’d filled the casings too tightly - they all burst when they were cooked.  Other than that, they were delicious.

We had them with eggs for breakfast, froze some, and gave some to Courtney to give to her Dad.  All in all we felt pretty proud of ourselves.

JJ and Dad Grinding Meat

I had never considered sausage, but when my son Chris suggested it to me, it seemed like the obvious thing to do.

This was back in June, when I was down visiting his newborn son, August.  Chris and Micha had spent a weekend on a dairy farm with friends and watched them make cheese.  Almost as an afterthought, Chris mentioned the farmer also was making sausage.

I love sausage, from the bratwursts and knackwusts and weisswursts of German food, to the dried sausages like Saucisson Sec I get here in Connecticut, to the wonderful Spanish sausages we eat each summer when visiting my father-in-law in Spain: Llonganisa, Chorizo, and, my favorite, Fuet.

As soon as I got home, I ordered sausage-making books: Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn, and (somewhat ambitiously) Professional Charcuterie by John Kinsella and David T. Harvey.  Both have lots of good information, but the former is both more useful and a more interesting read.  (The latter has recipies that start with, say, 30lbs of pork, or my favorite, 20lbs of aligator).

If I hadn’t been leaving for Europe, I would have bought everything I needed right then and there, but as I was planning to be away most of the summer, I filled up my birthday list with meat grinders, sausage stuffers and packages of bacteria.

I should mention that all of this horrifies my wife, Kate.  Not because she’s a vegan, or squemish, or that she doesn’t like sausage.  It’s just that she’s trying to lose some weight, and she doesn’t think sausages are part of the answer.  Nonetheless, when my birthday came around she and my parents bestowed all the tools I needed on me.

Since starting out, I’ve noticed that almost all the men I mention sausage making to have the same reaction I had when Chris first brought it up: “What a great idea.”  So this is for all the sausage-making wannabees out there - a running blog of our charcuterie adventures.