It's the Little Things That Get Ya

[larry]

I made another mortadella the other day. I did everything methodically, and had all my seasonings loaded into a grinder so I could grind them just before mixing them in. Everything was going great. Then I started to notice that the color of the meat mixture was going sort of yellow/orange. The more I mixed, the yellower it got. I had not seen this happen before. It finally dawned on me that instead of Mace, I had added Turmeric. I put in a little Mace, and, since there was no turning back, I saw it through to completion. Ugliest mortadella I've ever seen. It's kind of chicken soup yellow, with white chunks of fat. Texturally it came out great, and aside from the slight turmeric-y taste and mouthfeel, it tastes delicious. It just makes a very startling appearance. I'll try and get some photos up. The best spin I've heard about it is that turmeric is an anti-inflamatory. Maybe I can convince people that this is healthy. A whole new line of meat based dietary supplements.

[captain wassname]

You may have invented the next foodie craze

Jim

[RodinBangkok]

Tumeric can make some interesting sausage blends, not in mortadella necessarily, but we make a lot of ethnic foods for our catering business, and I've played with a lot of different spices and herbs that are not necessarily thought of in western type sausage formulations. Some of these that may be of interest are carum, pomegranate powders, both red and black, mango powder, asafetida (be careful with that one!), dried mushroom powders, tamarind, chili pastes, shrimp paste, lemon grass, to name a few. A lot are more associated with vegetarian cooking, but can compliment meats quite well.....in some cases!

[Oddwookiee]

I futzed around with a chicken sausage years ago, using my pork breakfast sausage recipe, adding in a little turmeric and tamarind, then boiling the life out of grated lemon grass, straining the water and using the liquid as the water in the sausage. Too much work for a commercial application, but great googly moogly was it tasty.

[RodinBangkok]

The secret to a lot of fresh herbs....is lemon grass a herb?... is to use the age old method of making a paste with them. I've been doing pastes for years now, even with my old tried and true western formulations. The use of whole seeds, and fresh herbs, along with some dry spices only when absolutely necessary can take your flavors to a new height, without much changes. In fact in most cases I had to reduce amounts from when I was using dried, and the flavors just seem to explode out. For commercial quantities we use a big Robo Coup processor, but for testing I still use a good old mortar and pestle, pounding, testing and tasting, repeat.