A True Taste of Herefordshire

A few days ago our free-range, rare breed Berkshire pigs went off for slaughter.  Not always a sad day even though they've been part of the family for quite sometime.  We keep just a couple on average twice a year and "Built like hippos, behave like thugs" is a suitable description for Berkshires; these two were no exception.  We give them no names, just numbers and I've lost count without consulting the paper-work, which is extensive; I think they must have been about P19 & P20.  But who cares! Once you've been knocked off your feet for the umpteenth time whilst distributing tasty windfalls, parsnip tops and other vegetable garden trimmings for their delicatation, Pig Day down at AH Griffiths of Leintwardine can't come soon enough!  Seriously though, Doug Griffiths' slaughter house is five minutes' away and we are SO lucky to have it.  At present it's the only one of its kind in Herefordshire/Shropshire: traditional butchers' shop at the front (complete with displays of flesh & fowl on marble slab in the window) and slaughterhouse in the rear premises complete with rules and regulations to make the most compliant weep.  For some good old country humour mixed with black comedy and a good smattering of political incorrectness, venture if you dare, to the cutting-room with your carcass instructions carefully prepared..........!

Today was Sausage Making Day and so for my demonstration/hands-on Cook Day I decided to make my own-recipe Pork with Perry, Little Herefordshire cheese and fresh herb sausages.

Firstly we gathered together a good lump of Monkland Dairy's unpasturised Little Hereford cheese, a bottle of Dunkertons' goodly organic Perry, some of our own pears, onions, garlic and fresh, green herbs from the garden.  All sausages require a little "rusk".  This is not just a padding and excuse to get away with using less meat.  It really does help to bind the mixture and absorb the fat thus making for a better texture and taste.  I like to make my own and today used a mixture of organic, UK grown porridge oats which I ground in the Magimix and some crumbs made from a good sourdough loaf from the Ludlow Food Centre.

After chopping, grating and mincing all the flavourings I added them to the coarsely chopped meat which was taken from the hands of pork and then poured over a good slug of Perry after which, the only thing to do is to get down and dirty, mixing with your hands to get everything amalgamated.

We then passed all of the mixture through the sausage-making machine on a coarse-mince setting
to get the consistency right..........
At this point it's a good idea to sample some of the mixture just to check you like it!  So we passed some through the machine in "sausage mode" but without using the skins and frizzled it up and ate it with some toasted sour dough bread for a late breakfast.  Add seasoning adjustments now:- some Halen Mon salt and the only imported ingredient: black pepper.......

 

After rewarding ourselves with a pot of Lavazza coffee and some homemade biscuits, sausage-making proper can begin.

The runners have to be prepared by unravelling them into little individual mounds of skins and then each one has to be sluiced through with cold running water to wash them out and lubricate them to ease the filling process.

At last sausage-making proper can begin!

It's always exciting when the first run is completed....

There's a definite art to looping-up the links.....

.......and the old kitchen stool has many uses!

......... They do say that the proof of the pudding is in the eating.  However all that we cooked at the end of labours were eaten so fast and the rest were destined either for today's Cook Day participants to take home with them or for my own freezer, all I had left to photograph were a couple of "rejects" which Henry and I had for supper!

Oh well, here's to remembering P19 & P20!