As I was wracking my brain trying to come up with a Saint Patrick’s day post for this blog that wasn’t corned beef and cabbage — because I had to post something, right? — I kept coming back to bangers and mash. I’ve never been to the Emerald Isle, and while like many Americans I boast of substantial Irish heritage — real or imagined — unfortunately the recipes of the homeland did not make their way down the generations to me — I guess there are only so many ways to prepare blighted potato. Bereft of any reference from travel or tradition, I turned to the Internet.

It’s pretty easy to find recipes for bangers and mash with a search; after all, it’s just sausages with mashed potatoes and maybe some onion gravy. But my searches also revealed a disturbing truth: while there were cursory references to “Irish” bangers and mash, the dish was mostly called “British pub grub”. The British?! No! How could we celebrate Saint Patrick’s day eating the food of the hated oppressors, the colonizers? The blood of my ancestors boiled at these revelations as my blogger gut sank knowing I didn’t have a post for Saint Patrick’s day.

But further research and reflection calmed the rage and doubt. After all, many recipes did refer to the dish as a British and Irish favourite. Many authors seemed to suggest that the dish emerged some time around World War I — 1919 to be precise, which is when the first reference to sausage as bangers is cited by the Oxford English Dictionary. This also happens to be the year the Irish Republic declared its independence from those hated British, the year in which the Irish war for independence began. Could those recently invented bangers have been the thing that emboldened the Irish patriots to cast off the yoke of servitude?

Like most food origin stories, the 1919 creation of bangers and mash shouldn’t be taken too seriously. It’s useful from a linguistic perspective, representing the beginning of the use of the word bangers, heretofore a word for dynamite, to refer to sausages, but thinking culinarily, do you really think it took humans until the 20th century to realize that sausages and mashed potatoes are a delicious combination? More likely, this dish has been enjoyed anywhere people share a love for sausage and potatoes, and on that score Ireland certainly qualifies. Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

Bangers

There’s no canonical sausage for this dish; the spirit of it is to use whatever sausage is available locally that you like. In my research, Cumberland sausage often came up as popular in the British version of the dish. I found a recipe on the highly trustworthy sausagemaking.org from none other than forum user “sausagemaker” himself, who claimed to be Cumbrian. I was just excited to find a British sausage recipe with no sage in it.

Sausage:

• 60% pork shoulder (346 g)
• 15% pork belly (232 g)
• 7.5% breadcrumbs (58 g)
• 15% water (116 g)
• 2.5% spice mixture (19 g)

Spice Mixture

• 72% salt (13.9 g)
• 13.5% black pepper (2.6 g)
• 4.5% nutmeg (.9 g)
• 4.5% mace (.9 g)
• 4.5% coriander (.9 g)

Follow standard sausage-making procedure: dice the meats and freeze them for 30 minutes, then grind them once through the coarse plate. Mix in the spices and grind again. Mix in the rest of the sausage ingredients.

Cumberland sausage is unique in that it is not twisted into links, but rather is sold by the inch from a large coil. This makes for some fun times in the frying pan, let me tell you.

To cook the stuffed sausage, I first poached it for twenty minutes in 150ºF water (following this ridiculous recipe) before browning it in a skillet.

Mash

Boil a few russet potatoes in their skins. Pass through a ricer and fold in warm milk and butter until just smooth.

Onion Gravy

• One large onion, sliced thin
• 3 T butter
• 3 T flour
• 1.5 cups beef stock
• Salt and pepper, to taste

Melt the butter in a skillet and add the onion. Caramelize over medium-low heat. Stir in the flour. Gradually stir in the beef stock and bring to a simmer. Add salt and pepper to taste.

To serve the whole dish, nestle pieces of cooked sausage in a mound of mashed potatoes and spoon on a healthy portion of gravy.

Why is it always the smallest dishes that require the most work? Take these two-bite-sized steamed buns: for all the time I spent making them, I probably could have barbecued a whole cow. Twice.

The work began two weeks ago when I started my kim chi, the Korean fermented cabbage pickle. Beyond ingredients I had from the farmers market — napa cabbage, scallions, carrots, garlic, ginger — this recipe called for a few specialty Korean ingredients that necessitated a trip to the always-interesting Shuang Hur Foods, an Asian grocery store on Nicollet in Minneapolis. Perusing the many jars and boxes labelled primarily in various Asian languages that I don’t read, I was a bit overwhelmed. It was easy enough to find Korean chili powder – red powder with Korean characters on it and a picture of a chili — but jarred shrimp was a challenge. I did eventually locate some jars with illustrations of happily frolicking shrimp, but with my ignorance of what was printed on the jars, I was at a loss for how to distinguish between them. What to do? I picked the one with the happiest looking shrimp and headed to the checkout.

Making kim chi is straightforward: salt the cabbage and let it ferment in the refrigerator overnight. The next day, mix with scallions, minced garlic, sliced ginger, shredded carrots, sugar, water and a whole lot of Korean chili powder and return to the refrigerator. My recipe, from David Chang and Peter Meehan’s Momofuku, recommended waiting one week before eating, with the kim chi in its prime in two. The waiting game.

After two weeks had just about passed, and I was getting excited about my kim chi, the time had come to make the buns. The recipe from Momofuku looked simple enough, but it made 50 buns. I had already waited two weeks for my kim chi, and now I was expected to have enough patience to carefully roll out 50 tiny buns? Unfortunately, the book warns against scaling the recipe down: any less dough and a stand mixer can’t be used to knead it.

Too little dough for a stand mixer, but what about for a food processor? I had recently been turned on to the idea of food processor dough kneading by a Food Lab article on New York Style Pizza at Home, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to try it. I dutifully assembled the ingredients — ½ Tbsp yeast, 6 oz water, 9 ½ oz white flour, 3 Tbsp sugar, 1 ½ Tbsp dry milk, ½ Tbsp salt, ¼ tsp baking soda and one-sixth of a cup of shortening — in the bowl of a food processor with the steel blade, locked the cover and hit the switch. I was amazed at how quickly the dough came together and and reached the perfect springy-smooth consistency — about two minutes. I suppose I should have known from the many pasta doughs I’ve pulled together in the processor that it was an ideal kneading machine, but I was surprised how well it worked with a traditional bread dough.

And it was a good thing I saved so much time kneading the dough with the food processor, since there was still lots of work to be done. The dough rose two hours then was punched down, divided into twenty-five rounds,  rested another hour, rolled out, folded, placed on 25 separate 3″ squares of parchment (what, you don’t have 3″ squares of parchment on hand? Better get the scissors), rested another 30 minutes, and finally steamed in four batches. Whew.

As much fun as these buns are to make, they’re not going to be much without something delicious — and preferably porcine — to fill them with. Chang and Meehan slow-roasted pork belly — which actually would have been pretty easy — but I was led down another path by unrelated reading in the Texas Barbecue Cookbook by Rob Walsh: I was going to smoke my pork. But since I live in a tiny apartment without a yard, it would have to be indoor smoking.

There are stovetop gadgets for smoking indoors, but I don’t have one. Instead, I planned to use a technique developed by Cook’s Illustrated that utilized Lapsang Souchong tea. I happened to have a healthy supply of this from the last time I tried the technique a few years ago — because really, who drinks this stuff?

I first salted and peppered thin cutlets of pork shoulder and placed them on a rack that would fit in a half sheet pan. Said half sheet pan was then filled with the ground powder of tea extracted from twenty Lapsang teabags. Placing the rack over the sheet pan, I covered the whole thing tightly in foil and placed this improvised smoker on the stone in my 500ºF oven. This is hot enough to get the tea smoking, and if the pork is frozen briefly before going in the oven it can sit in the smoke for a half hour without overcooking in the intense heat. After the half hour was up, I dropped the heat to 250ºF, poured some water over the tea, and let the chops cook two hours until very tender. By the way, if cutting open and emptying twenty teabags doesn’t strike you as tedious, I guarantee you that scrubbing caked-on tea dust out of every hole of a cooling rack will.

To finish the pork, I made a quick barbecue lacquer by whisking together ketchup, soy sauce, mirin, brown sugar and sriracha. I then painted the sauce on the smoked pork and broiled until the chops shone. I let the pieces cool slightly and chopped them into slivers for serving.

Having fermented my kim chi, steamed my buns, and smoked my pork, I wasn’t especially in the mood to devote many more hours to this meal. Luckily, the other elements — chopped scallions, cucumber pickles (from a long-in-the-fridge jar, thank God), sriracha, and mayo — only needed to be put on the table; diners could assemble the sandwiches themselves.

But while it’s true that small packages may require the most work to get together, the reward can also be very big: these buns were delicious — well worth the effort. While I found that sticking to Chang’s recommended toppings — mayo, sriracha, pickles, pork and scallions – was better than my version using kim chi in place of the pickles, both were very good. Maybe even good enough to make them again.

In one of my first posts on this blog I declared my love for harissa, the spicy North African red pepper spread. Since then I have strayed a bit: our jar of harissa run out, I began to flirt with other spicy red pastes – I was not immune the the trendy allure of sriracha. But when Martha made hlelem recently, I was reminded of my former love. With sausage on the brain lately, a freshly-opened jar of harissa had me thinking one thing: merguez.

A sausage popular in North Africa and Europe, merguez is usually made with lamb. This makes sense — there are a lot of pastoralists raising flocks of sheep in North Africa most of whom are Muslim — pork is neither practical nor permitted. But since I’m free of religious obligations or cultural sensitivity, pork was definitely an option and one too delicious to ignore. The argument could be made that a pork sausage is not really merguez, but I say as long as there’s harissa I’ll not worry about fine distinctions.

As I was searching the Internet for recipes, I was disappointed to see that many contain only a small amount of harissa: 3 tablespoons per 3# of meat, for example. To make up for this deficiency most recipes add other spices (cayenne, coriander, cumin, sumac, etc.). This might be traditional, but I didn’t see how adding additional spices would help; the flavor of the harissa ought to be flavor enough. My final recipe was:

• 1# 5 oz boneless pork shoulder
• 10 g garlic (3 cloves)
• 50 g harissa
• 15 g salt

If harissa is the only thing a sausage has to lean on in terms of flavor, the success of the recipe obviously depends on the quality of the harissa. Someday I will make my own harissa (and you can be sure you’ll be hearing about it here), but with a jar already open I used Mustapha’s. This is, after all, the harissa I fell in love with; I haven’t sampled other brands very widely.

I served the sausage with a cous cous-based taboulli.

With the feast of our Lady of Guadalupe right around the corner — tomorrow, in fact — I took the opportunity to become acquainted with one of the most important traditions surrounding this sacred festival: tamales. While I’m an avid tamale consumer, I’ve never actually made them. So when I heard the kitchen at Church of the Ascension would be open last Saturday for anyone wanting to learn the art of corn-filled corn husks, I jumped at the chance.

The bill of fare for the evening included three kinds of tamales: chicken, pork and sweet. The chicken tamales were based on pulled chicken in salsa verde — tomatillos, cilantro, onion, etc. Some of the salsa verde also went into the masa, which otherwise consisted of maseca, lard, chicken broth and seasonings. The ingredients for the pork tamales were similar, except in place of salsa verde there was a salsa roja made from a whole lot of red peppers with garlic and herbs, and in place of the pulled chicken, pulled pork. The sweet tamales had the simplest masa of all, flavored only with a bit of sugar and filled with a prune.

The process for making all of the tamales was essentially the same: place a healthy handful of masa near the top and in the center of a presoaked corn husk, being sure to place the masa on the slightly smoother side (a subtle distinction to this güero’s hands). Stick the appropriate filling in the middle of the masa, then roll the edge of the corn husk over the filling, rotating slighly to form a rough cylinder. Fold up the bottom half of the corn husk and set aside.

Sweet tamales were a little different: before adding the masa, a thin layer of red food coloring is painted on the husk. As the tamales sit and later cook, this coloring soaks through the dough and imbues it with a bright pink hue. In addition to coloring the masa, the food coloring dyed my hands a bright-red. My mentors laughingly told me it would come off with a little bleach.

Watching experienced hands making tamales, I was struck by the differing techniques. Some were very meticulous, carefully spreading masa across the interior of the corn husk, laying the filling in a tight row in the center, then rolling everything so that the meat would be perfectly centered in a row of corn masa. Others took a more industrial approach, quickly plopping down a pile of masa before shoving some filling in the center, rolling, folding and starting another. A few rolled their tamales cigar-style,but others simply folded, ending each one with a firm pat. Regional and family variations abound.

I didn’t stay long enough to see the tamales get cooked, but I heard vastly differing claims as to how long they would need to steam, everywhere from a half an hour to four hours. The deciding factor seemed to be how many tamales one was steaming at once.

Where to get these delicious tamales? The ones I helped make were served at the Basilica of Saint Mary last weekend as part of a cooperative effort between the two parishes. But the official feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe is December 12th, and if you want to be at Ascension (1723 Bryant Ave N) at 5:30 AM for Las Mañanitas and 7 AM for mass, your reward will be delicious tamales and hot coffee. And if you’re not a morning person, there will be a fiesta starting around 4 PM. But with the skills I picked up in Ascension’s basement last weekend, I might just make some all for myself.

The light chill today was a reminder that fall — my favorite cooking season — is upon us. Fall brings many hearty possibilities ruled out by summer’s heat; suddenly it is possible, even desirable, to have the oven on for a few hours. Enter the braise—meat and vegetables stewed in rich liquid until tender.

This particular recipe was inspired by the small cabbages that Martha insisted we buy at the farmers’ market. When I saw them, my mind wandered to the bowl of crab apples sitting at home and the thick-cut pork chops I keep wanting to buy at Clancey’s. And so a braise was born.

Braised Pork, Apples and Cabbage

Some of the visual appeal of this dish is from the small (5″ diameter) cabbages that we found at the farmers’ market. If only large cabbages are available, use one, roughly chopped, and omit the browning step for the cabbage. Four regularly-sized, tart apples can be substituted for the crab apples; cut them into eighths, rather than quarters.

• 2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
• 2# bone-in pork roast
• Salt and pepper
• 1 large onion, sliced
• 2 fennel stalks or a small bulb, roughly chopped
• 1 quart pork stock (recipe below), cider or water
• 4 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
• 3 small heads cabbage
• 8 crab apples (about 2″ in diameter)
• 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

Preheat oven to 300°F.

Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a large Dutch oven (one that has an oven-proof lid) over medium-high heat. Thoroughly coat the pork roast with salt and pepper. Place the pork in the Dutch oven and brown on all sides, a few minutes per side. Remove the pork to a plate and drain all but 1 tablespoon of fat. Return pot to medium heat and add the onions and fennel. Cook until onions are soft and starting to brown. Add garlic cloves, pork roast, and enough pork stock/cider/water to come most of the way up the side of the roast. Bring to a boil, cover and place in oven. Cook for one hour.

Meanwhile, cut the cabbages into quarters. Cut the apples into quarters and slice out their cores. Heat remaining one tablespoon of olive oil in a 12″ skillet over medium-high heat until shimmering. Add apple slices, cut side down. Cook until deep golden brown, about 4 minutes. Nudge the apples to the other cut side and cook until brown. Transfer apples to a plate. Place cabbage in skillet, one cut side down, and cook until starting to blacken on the edges. Flip the cabbage to the other cut side and repeat. Transfer cabbage to a plate.

After one hour of cooking, remove Dutch oven from oven. Taste the liquid and add salt and pepper as desired. Add cabbage, apples and vinegar and stir to combine. Arrange the pot so the liquid mostly covers everything. Return to oven and cook for another one hour, or until the pork is tender, but not necessarily falling off the bone.

Strain the liquid into a stockpot or large skillet. Return the solids to Dutch oven and cover to keep warm. Bring braising liquid to a rolling boil and continue cooking until reduced by half (or, until you’re tired of waiting). Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Arrange apples, cabbage, onions and fennel in a wide, shallow serving bowl. Slice or pull pork and arrange in center of vegetables. Pour reduced braising liquid over top of everything. Serve with hearty bread for sopping up the juice.

Quick Pork Broth:

Just in case you don’t have pork stock sitting around in the freezer (you might want to check in the back), here’s a quick way to get a flavorful broth that will work well as a braising liquid for pork.

• ¼# Ground pork
• Half an onion, roughly chopped (or onion scraps)
• 1 small carrot, roughly chopped

Combine all ingredients in a 2 quart saucepan. Add 4 ½ cups of water. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a bare simmer and allow to cook, partially covered, for one hour. Strain off the solids and discard.