dougal wrote:Easy, chaps!
Fricandeau, its best to read *carefully*, and interpret positively.
BTW, as regards careful reading - Pete's handle relates to card games, not pigs, despite his close involvement with the meat and allied trades...
While undoubtedly sausages have been a repository for all manner of trimmings, offcuts and offal - to make a consistent product with a specific character, you need a (more or less specific) recipe.
Now while a merguez-maker in Fez might well use various bits that he finds are best sold in sausage, those bits are not going to be the same, or in the same proportions, as sausagemaking resource used by a butcher in Lincoln or Windermere.
To replicate the product of Morocco, Lincolnshire or Cumbria one needs a bit more to go on than "whatever the guy has to hand" 'cos it certainly ain't likely to be exactly the same as happens by chance to be available to yourself.
What "you" have got most conveniently will inevitably be different for everyone.
But, even in Morocco, Lincolnshire and Cumbria, more than a single type of sausage is routinely made - and traders will strive to produce a fairly consistent product from day to day. Abdul's Merguez are intended to be the same tomorrow as yesterday. He might not achieve the consistency of Ronald MacDonald, but he doesn't intend his clients to be taking pot luck when they ask him for Merguez. There's a particular customer expectation that he is trying to meet.
Now as to how much variability there is in the method and ingredients, that's another question, but what Oddley was asking was along the lines of whether the recipe he used produces something that Abdul's clients would recognise as "Merguez"...
I've only eaten them in France, not North Africa.
The meat has been a deep dark *red* particularly after cooking.
They were frequently sold at the roadside, grilled over charcoal. I'd say that a certain amount of char and smoke greatly enhances them. Hence I'm surprised at the absence of grilled red pepper flesh from these recipes. Whereas Harissa emphasises the heat of the Chillies, IMHO Merguez wants the smokey "grilled red peppery-ness" of the sweet peppers.
I know they will have a common ancestry but I wonder what the defining distinctions are between Merguez and fresh (ie not air-cured) Chorizo.
I'd suggest that the Merguez are more likely to be in smaller casings, have more fat, finer mincing and more of a taste of peppers (and hot chillies) than just of 'spicy' (rather than sweet) paprika. That's just my suggestions - what would others say?
Thanks Dougal, that's exactly what I was going to type. So let's do your last bit first.
Merguez is made with lamb in sheeps casing. Don't forget that most North Africans are Moslems, and therefore it would be forbidden to eat hog casings. As for Chorizo they are a pork sausage, and the same applies.
The Moorish invasion of Spain integrated both peoples, and it would come as no surprise to find that the spices in both Merguez and Chorizo to be similar.
If one want's to make a sausage with 'bits of anything to hand' then check out the Dutch Frikandel. It's never travelled further than Holland and North Belgium, and never will.
Now just to round off with, my French wife worked in a bank in Algeria, we also lived near Marseilles, and in Lyons and Paris where there are substantial numbers of North Africans. I've scoffed hundreds of different Merguez sausages. Which Dougal brings us nicely back round to the main body of your text. So thank you again.
Pete.