Sweet Italian Sausage

When I first went to visit J in California, on the night of our arrival she had prepared a beautiful supper of Lasagne made with Italian sausage. I had never tasted a lasagne so delicious and the Italian sausage was gorgeous. Ever since then I have tried to buy them, but nothing has come close. I tried to recreate the flavour by chucking fennel seeds in, but that didn't work. But then, by chance and by Googling something very unrelated, I came across this recipe, which called itself a recipe for sausage but advised not to bother putting them into casings as they will only be broken open and the meat extracted for cooking anyway!

 I made it and they were perfect (still not as good as J's lasagne!)

We had them the night before last with some fresh tagliatelle I had made and a rich tomato sauce. Last night I piled three flour tortilla wraps with a layer of tomato sauce with broken and fried pieces of the sausage meat, cheese on top, in the oven, delicious!


900g minced pork
1tbls Salt
1 tbls ground fennel seeds
1 1/2 tbls sweet paprika
1 tbls finely minced garlic
1 tbls black pepper
3 tbsp Red wine vinegar

Mix all of these together and, hey presto, sweet Italian sausages.

Ricarelli

First time I have made these, definitely learnt how not to make them...I didn't whisk the egg whites enough, and probably over cooked the little chaps too. b=But they were nice, didn't have the chewy centre of which I have read, they were quite hard.

Must do better.

Danish Pastry

                              

Starting to get my cooking libido back. I feel like I've been living in a damp, depressing cave for the last six months, the winter just dragged on and on.  But now the sun has come out and it feels so different. I don't remember a winter/spring ever feeling like this.

Back to Danish pastries.. Thought I would bake some. I'm not going to include a recipe here because (a) it would take to long and (b) nobody reads this anyway! It took ages, make the dough, rest the dough, add the butter, fold the dough, rest the dough for an hour, roll and fold the dough, rest for an hour, repeat three or four times and then leave for eight hours or overnight. Finally roll the dough, shape the pastries, prove the pastries for two hours, fill the pastries and then FIVE YEARS later you can BAKE the pastries!!! Woohoo!!! 

So I did, I then iced them and ate them. 

Definitely worth the wait.