A TONIC FOR THE TROUPE

Sometimes I wonder when the gin bubble will burst and it’ll stop being cool.  Not any time soon I expect since, as my pal Jonathan and I were discussing, gin is essentially so very easy to make.  You take some neutral spirits (which are more or less vodka), add various flavors, historically juniper but these days take your pick – hyssop, frankincense, strawberries, whatever - mix ‘em up and there you have an artisanal uniquely flavored gin.  The possibilities are endless.  Exhaustingly so.

I was having this conversation in the Port House House on the Strand in London, a Spanish wine and tapas bar where they have a gin and tonic menu (of course they do).

What you see above on the left is made with Aviation Gin, which I thought was a basic  gin that I bought in California in supermarkets, but I guess I may have been wrong about that. There’s some lavender in there too. I forget the name of the gin in the one on the right (which is the same as the one at the top of this post) but there’s orange peel in the glass and it tasted vaguely of marmalade. 

And these were just fine but they weren’t the real reason I was there.  When I’d been there before I’d had the morcilla con heuvos cordones, black pudding from Burgos with a fried quail egg on top, which was spectacular - the morcilla rather than the egg - so I had to go back and have it again – and I did – and it was every bit as good as I remembered it, though now I’m thinking I could do it myself if I found a source for the right morcilla.

Also on the menu were Papas Arrugadas, Canarian wrinkled potatoes with a mojo sauce, which seemed irresistible but they were a disappointment – a bit soggy I’d have said, but maybe they were meant to be that way.  

Here’s something similar I made earlier, in fact years back. 

And as if my gin ruminations had come back to haunt me today I got some targeted advertising (yeah right) for non-alcoholic gin and tonic.  I mean, really, why would you? Really.

SOME RECENT SAUSAGES

Last week I went to Orochon Ramen, a somewhat famous (I mean it’s appeared on some foodie TV) show, a Japanese restaurant in Little Tokyo, and I had a big bowl of ramen with salt broth, as you would.  But there on the appetizer menu was “spicy sausage,” and that obviously couldn’t be passed up, since it seems to me that the Japanese know a thing or two about sausage.  It came like this:

 Looking and in fact tasting very much like a hotdog but not exactly, having more texture, being far less homogenized than a standard issue hotdog, and it was in some kind of sauce, which I guess is probably where the spiciness came from, though not a whole lot of it.  It wasn’t exactly a highpoint of the sausage maker’s art, but I’m glad I had it.

Anyway this got me back on the sausage trail.  A year or two ago I was in a little supermarket in Nowheresville, Nevada, and found they were selling Tennessee Pride sausage, which I’d had recommended to me by both real and adopted southerners, so obviously I had to buy some.  It looked like this as it was cooking.  Mmm – sagey.

But then a couple of weeks back, a visitor from Alabama, passing through and seeking to ingratiate herself, brought this version of Tennessee pride with her:

Less than five dollars a pack, 18 patties per back – we’re talking affordable! All else being equal, I probably wouldn’t have chosen the mild – but this is not a pony to be looked in the mouth.

And then to round off the week, in the local “ethnic” supermarket, they had morcilla; as near as you’re likely to get to black pudding in this town.  I like morcilla a lot but they proved tricky to cook.  

I tried to cook them whole in a frying pan which was probably a mistake.  The chances of getting them good and hot before they collapse and wriggle out of the skins is pretty low. 

In fact, I miscalculated and mine were still semi lukewarm when I put them on the plate – so then I had to go back stick them in the microwave.  They didn’t completely explode but the inside of the microwave did need cleaning afterwards.   Still …  see that pork fat?  Well of course you do?

And naturally this morcilla brought back thoughts of the black puddings of yesteryear, including the one I had not that long ago in Heathrow Terminal One, at Heston Blumenthal’s Perfectionist’s Café – a name that’s really asking for trouble.  It came looking like this with scrambled egg.

This black pudding (“from Stornoway!” says the menu) didn’t have as many bells and whistles as you’d expect from young Heston.  As you see above, it didn’t have nearly enough fat, either.

        One of those little known facts that all foodies know is that quotes is that blood sausage is mention on the Odyssey.  It’s in Book 20, he’s thinking about how he’s going to kill all of Penelope’s suitors. 

“Thus he chided with his heart, and checked it into endurance, but he tossed about as one who turns a paunch full of blood and fat in front of a hot fire, doing it first on one side and then on the other, that he may get it cooked as soon as possible, even so did he turn himself about from side to side, thinking all the time how, single handed as he was, he should contrive to kill so large a body of men as the wicked suitors.”

Yes – sausage can be metaphoric.  Or whatever the adjective is from simile.