Old World Sausage

The old world, or old country, for many people means a place where their ancestors came from. The majority of Americans came from some far off distant land in search of something new. However, despite the new atmosphere many people continued carry on their ethnic heritage through food. Not only did food from the old world remind people of the place they came from, but also of a former and a more gracious period when things were a little simpler. Many foods can be traced to a certain place and ethnicity, such as desserts and side dishes, but most especially meats. While meat is used many different ways to create classic unique main dishes one style of meat has been carried down through the generation and remains to be popular, sausage.

Making sausage can be an intense processing starting with a quality cut of meat and grinding it down to the preferred chunkiness or smoothness. Different grinding sizes will produce a slightly different flavor. Then spices need to be chosen and weight to be proportional with the amount of ground meat. When making a dried or smoked sausage a cure needs to be added while fresh sausage need to be cooked before consumption. Next a casing needs to be chosen. There are both artificial casings and natural casing. A lot of people prefer the snap of a sausage with natural casing along because of the added flavor from the casing which is commandingly absent in artificial casing sausages. However, both are used the same way and yield the same amount of sausage. Then lastly the sausage either has to be cooked, dried, or smoked before it can be eaten.
In spite of the time and effort that goes into making sausage it has been made since 600-500 BC in China, Rome and Greece. Early civilization originally developed sausage to preserve and transport meat then discovered that dried berries and spices added to the meat improved the flavor of the sausage. Not only was sausage and sausage making techniques important for human survival during this time, but so was the mind set of using every part of the animal and not letting anything go to waste. From this mind set unique sausages arose, such as blood sausage and head cheese. Both of these sausages do not have a specific geological origin and can be traced to multiple areas throughout Europe and Asia. There are also a variety of different names which both of these sausages can be call which depends on the area. For example, blood sausage is generally used in the United States while blood pudding is used in Great Britain, boudin in France, and morcilla in Spain. Head cheese is used in America, but in England it is called brawn, in Germany Sulze, in Brazil Queijo de Porco, and in Hungary disznósajt.
Despite a variety of names the bottom line is that no one wanted waste any nutrients that were in every part of an animal. For blood sausage the blood of pigs or cattle was normally collected and cooked with a filler, such as meat, barley, or oatmeal until it was thick enough to congeal when cooled. Some blood sausages also contain raisins making the sausage sweet, sweet blood sausage. Head cheese was developed with the same mind set and is in fact not a cheese, but rather meat from the head of cattle or pigs that has been cleaned; all of the organs have been removed, and simmered. This produces a gelatin from the marrow of the skull. The head cheese will also contain any incidental meat that came off of the head during the simmering process.

Scandinavian Potato Sausage

My Mother-in-Law has a wonderful potato sausage made up at a sausage company nearby where she lives. Lucky her! I know of none where I live that would do this for me. She serves this very Scandinavian Sausage with cranberry sauce. Also on her Christmas holiday table are some other wonderfully flavored items. Presulta, which is a recipe for meat loaf essentially. (That recipe is also posted, find it on my article list on this ezine) Presulta is served cold with white vinegar making it 'very' unique. Traditional Swedish Rice Pudding that is served hot. Swedish Corn Pudding, often a children's favorite, mine when I was growing up anyway. Twenty Four Fruit Salad, which I really cannot say how Scandinavian that is but it sure is yummy. She has alternatives to that salad as well, one is called Easy Twenty Four Hour Salad and the other one is called Easier Twenty Four Hour Salad. Too cutie huh?!

I grew up with different things and served my children those things but many of those Christmas traditions to start withe children have fallen to the wayside.
EVERY single Christmas Eve of my whole like I have had Oyster Stew. I always made sure my daughters had just a taste as well to continue on with the tradition. There have been many Christmas' since that we have not been together so since they always hated oyster stew that tradition for them is long gone. Oh well, new ones arise for new days and outlooks.
Here is my Mother-in-Laws recipe for Potato Sausage:
USE EQUAL PORTIONS:
Beef Pork Potatoes
Have meat ground together at the butchers. season with salt (1 tsp.) per pound of ingredients) add pepper to taste.
Pack in casings. ( Eww, I know, lets just not go there OK?)
Boil 1/2 hour.
If you can't find casings, ( or simply refuse to go there) you can go ahead and make them into patties and fry them over low heat.
Serve this sausage ( or patties for the squeamish ) hot with cranberry sauce. It is the cranberry sauce that makes the difference here so that is a total must!
These dishes mentioned are obviously not just meant for holidays of course so do try Potato Sausage, I think you will love it.

Am I still eating Oyster Stew every Christmas Eve? Yes indeed I am!
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ABOUT Kathy Ostman-MagnusenI paint and sculpt female fantasy art. I dream of beautiful women on canvas and art of exotic women.I have illustrated for Hay House Inc.,"Women Who Do Too Much" CARDS, taken from Anne Wilson Schaef's book. I also illustrated for Neil Davidson, who was considered for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing, and several other publications. My paintings are collected worldwide.