Morcilla Once More

1 ltr pig blood
500g back fat
50g salt
10g black pepper
10g Pimentón
150g onion, finely chopped
8g thyme
12g garlic
300g dry Paella rice, cooked and drained
Beef runners and hog casings.

The pig blood was made up using 150g dried blood and 850ml water. The rice was cooked for 15 minutes.

It was time to make some more Morcilla after the success of the first batch. I played around with the recipe a little by using less rice this time and not cooking the rice for so long. The first time round I had been delayed with another task while the rice steamed after cooking so that it had started to loose its consistency as it sat in the pot awaiting my return. This time, I cooked the rice as though I was going to serve it. Both changes affected the texture of the finished Morcilla which was noticeably more bloody this time and the whole grains of rice were visible in the sausage. I think the previous over-cooking of the rice was a good accident and I would do this again the next time. I like the bloody nature of this Morcilla, but it does not keep its shape so well when it is peeled and put in the pan to fry. I have no idea which is the more traditional rendition of this Spanish classic, but I love the results of what I am making here.

I didn't have enough beef runners to stuff the whole lot so I had to use some smaller hog casings. I like the variety of shapes. This time I remembered to tie the sausages into rings so that I didn't loose any during poaching. Like fresh sausages, the Morcilla changed in the first 12 hours. When they first came out of the poach there was a great variety in the colours and apparent textures but by the next day they had become quite uniform.

The next time I make this, I think I will not bother with the thyme. It doesn't really seem to add anything noticeable to the sausage. I'd also cut fat into larger chunks.

I'm planning to make Marmite sausages soon. Obviously I am a big Marmite fan and I have heard good reports from people who have tried Marmite sausages. Now I'm starting to think that a Marmite black pudding would be a good idea as the colour and texture should be a natural fit.

Morcilla

150g dried pig blood
900 ml water
500g hard pork back fat
400g dry Arborio rice, cooked
100g onion, fine chopped
10g garlic, crushed
5g thyme
10g Pimentón (sweet smoked paprika)
50g salt
5g black pepper
beef runners

Making Morcilla (Spanish black pudding) is a big deal for me. I have been a fan of blood sausage for a long time now and it's the texture I love as much as the taste. I also warm to the 'waste no part of the animal' attitude of its origins. It's an odd journey for someone like me, raised to eat neither pork nor blood products. I wonder if there are other Jewish black-pudding fans out there? Maybe we should start a club. Or a support group?

This is a different type of product to a fresh meat sausage so for me it represents yet another new branch of my sausage-making experiences. Like Boudin Blanc, Morcilla is a pre-cooked sausage. These spent an hour and 20 minutes poaching in water at 80 degrees C. I am going to have to get a bigger pot for this kind of thing, as my largest pot is a domestic pressure-cooker base and it could barely cope with the load.

Again, I chose to use a recipe from The Sausage Book. I have seen other recipes for making blood sausage that use just a funnel, nozzle and ladle to get the blood mixture into the casings. No stuffer required. But with this recipe, the rice gives the pre-cooked sausage a firm rather than a runny texture such that a sausage stuffer is needed to get the mixture into the casings. The rice is not noticeable in the finished sausage which has a light and fluffy-yet-sticky texture; something that I enjoy about black pudding.

My biggest problem came with tying off the links. These need to be tied off with string rather than just twisting the casing like a regular sausage. This is partly because the mixture is more runny than sausage meat and also the beef runners are thicker walled than hog casings and more likely to open. I tried to use lightweight cooking twine but it was not up to the job and kept breaking. The result was that one of my puddings spilled its contents into the poaching pan. A terrible loss. Next time I will invest in some butchers' string and tie them off properly.

I don't know if the thyme is right in this recipe. There is not enough to make a difference to taste, so next time I will either leave it out or increase the quantity. Maybe some rosemary would work well along side it.

This is the first time that I got to use beef runners to make sausage. I have enough left for another batch and then I will try using beef middles to see the difference in size and shape it produces.