Wednesday 16 July 2014

Let's play 'hide the sausage'!


Cro and I are swapping roles for a bit - he is having a rant about the Israel/Palestine situation, and I am going to do something about food again. He should be alright - I don't think those Palestinian rockets can reach France - yet.

Today's breaking news is that a sausage cartel has been uncovered in Germany. All the sausage manufacturers seem to have got together in a secret location to fix the price of wurst.

The broadcaster who broke this news this morning, had a hard job keeping a straight face when describing the seriousness of the situation - made harder by all the sausage jokes put out by his colleagues sitting beside him:

About the German, vegetarian pessimist: He fears the wurst.

I have often wondered why the humble/noble sausage inspires inexhaustible scope for humour, given the gruesomeness of its ingredients and manufacture, but when it is embroiled in a scandal played out as a drama of skulduggery in the Land of Sausages, the scope for taking the traditional piss becomes limitless.

A new recipe: 'Sausage Embroiled in Scandal'. We have our own West Country sausage recipe involving the local booze, as in: 'She likes a sausage in cider!'

I have only once lost my sense of humour with regard to sausages, and that was in a German restaurant at about midnight, when the only available dish on the menu was blutwurst.

Occasionally I like a bit of the English Black Pudding, not only because that it tastes quite nice, but also on the grounds that if you have decided to eat meat, you shouldn't be prissily squeamish about eating all of it - if you eat beef, then you are eating the blood in the veins anyway, but they bleed pigs after slaughter so why throw it away or waste it as compost?

So the blutwurst turned up on a plate surrounded by a mound of steamed cabbage and a small pile of potatoes. It looked very bland and boring - until I cut into it.

The sausage turned out to be a deceptively pale sac filled with bright red, liquid blood which flooded the plate as soon as I cut it, turning the potato and cabbage into little islands set in a lurid sea.

I went hungry that night.


15 comments:

  1. I have never eaten black pudding (didn't fancy it) but having read those last two paragraphs then I shall definitely never eat it.

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    1. Black pudding is nothing like that. Believe me. It's cooked for a start.

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  2. On a recent visit to Deutchland, I bought a cooked sausage at a stall situated in a railway station underpass. It came lightly wrapped in a piece of paper, and was (I can confirm) bloody delicious.

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  3. My mom, being the Polish one, had a lot of duck's blood soup as a child. I never had it. My father, who was a cook/chef, had it when it was served to him when they were 'courting'. He had some not-so-nice things to say about it, from what I understand.

    I love sausage. And when I tried to be a vegetarian, it was sausage that drew me back to being a meat eater. That and steak. And lamb.

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    1. So if he had bad things to say about it but still ate it, I am guessing it aided his 'courtship'? I need to know.

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    2. Well I was born to them, along w/five other siblings.
      From what my Mom relates, he said something like "I love you but don't ever ever ever make me eat that again"

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  4. I know a street stall in Kreuzberg that serves the best street food in Berlin. All kinds of sausage.

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    1. Rachel - can you tell me the name of it? The husband will be in Berlin next month.

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    2. Yes, indeed I can. I go there each time I return to Berlin. It is on Mehringdamm just before the Ubahn and by some shops and a sports bar where I happily go alone. The stall is always crowded with local people.

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    3. Speck is a good one - 99% fat. There are about 600 others to choose from as well, I am told.

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    4. Oh thanks Rachel! I'll tell R - maybe he can mail me some when he's there!

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    5. Open up a sausage stall anywhere in Germany, and you will soon be crowded with people.

      The Imbiss in Hamburg where the first Hamburgers were made has - possibly - THE worst food in Germany.

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    6. True, I don't know the whole of Berlin although I have been there many times, but always staying in Kreuzberg. Who cares about fat, it is good for you.

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    7. That's true too - it's being fat which isn't good for you.

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