Blood Cakes and Sausages

One of the new things we wanted to try this year with our half pig is black pudding, which is hard to find in a 'happy' form. Because the pig's from a local smallholder, abattoir, and butcher, it was possible to collect the blood on slaughter day.

I froze this, because I needed fat from the rest of the pig (only collected a week later), and defrosted it above simmering water this morning.

To make the puddings:

• The night before, cook 500g of pearl barley (done in advance as it takes about an hour to cook), and set 500g of oatmeal (I used porridge oats that went through the blender) soaking in enough water to make a porridge.
• Chop 1kg of back fat into small pieces. Put some of this in a big pan (I used an 8l stock pot, which was just big enough), and add 1kg of finely diced onion. Sweat this very gently, until the onion's translucent, then add the rest of the fat. Cook this gently until the fat's running.
• Add the oatmeal, the barley, 600ml of double cream, and plenty of seasoning. We used coriander, cumin, mace, salt, pepper.
• Stir in the blood. Preheat the oven to 170°C.
• Cook until it start to thicken, then pour into lined & greased loaf tins: we needed about twelve 500ml tins. Cover loosely with greased foil.
• Put in water baths in the oven, at 170°C, for about 80–90 minutes, until a knife goes into them cleanly.

Once cool, I've sliced and frozen ours. These aren't, strictly, black puddings, but blood cakes. You can funnel the mix into large sausage skins, and poach them, but this runs the risk of explosive mess, which I didn't want on our first attempt.

Verdict: extremely good. Could do with slightly more seasoning, though.

Alongside this, we also made two dishes of brawn: basically, put all the 'bits' in a big pan, cover with water, add a big handful of herbs, cloves, mace, salt and pepper, and simmer for 4–5 hours. By bits, I mean anything you have left over. In our case, I put in the trotters, bones, ears, and some of the cheeks (I took off the properly meaty bits for sausages).

Once it's cooked, you can pull apart the meat, and put everything you fancy eating into a flat dish. The remaining stock gets boiled down by 50–60%, and then poured on top. We had disproportionately many trotters (we got the spares), so the stock was properly gelatinous, and set really firm. The brawn gets chilled, and I'll then cut it into portion-sized pieces, and it'll go in casseroles or other dishes where a little meat is useful.

Last thing was the sausages. We decided to limit ourselves to pork & leek, and Welsh Dragon (leek and chilli), which were the most successful (and versatile) of last year's trials.

The basic recipe for sausages is a mix of meat (not too lean or too fatty), to which you add 1% salt (10g per kilo of meat); 5–10% cereal (100g/kilo: I use chopped up porridge oats); 5–7% water; and 0.1% pepper.

I think that 10% oats, and 7% water, is about right. Cereal isn't a cost-saving filler; it's really important to the flavour and texture. Last year's batch had 5%, and was actually too meaty, and too greasy. I say 'too': it was, in fact, delicious, and that was my only criticism.

To this, you can then add anything you fancy. Spices should be around 1% (again, 10g or 2 tsp per kilo); fruit or vegetables (apples or leeks, for examples) should be 5–10%. Therefore, the Welsh Dragon sausages are:

• 1kg ground pork, mixed lean and fatty
• 100g chopped oats/oatmeal
• 75ml cold water
• 10g (2 tsp) salt
• a few twists of black pepper
• 100g chopped leeks
• 10g (2 tsp) chilli powder

The leek ones just omit the chilli. Tasty? Oh, yes. We started the sausages yesterday, and will finish them shortly: we've just tried the black pudding, bacon, and some of the sausages for a cooked breakfast, and they're really, really, good.