Roman Bangers

[William2685]

Hello everyone and thanks for the great recipes. This is aimed at a moderator as I have a new recipe I'm rather keen on and would like to share, but am not sure how to go about it. Should I ask permission first? Seems a bit rude to just barge in. It's on a Word document at present.

Kind regards, Will.

[wheels]

Hi William, Welcome.

We don't stand on ceremony here - so just 'fire away' with your recipe.

Phil

[William2685]

Thanks, Phil, OK here goes...

Roman Pork & Leek Sausages

Apicius is the title of a collection of Roman recipes and I found it in old cookery book called ‘The Roman Cookery of Apicius’, translated by John Edwards and published by Rider books in 1984.

The name Apicius had long been associated with an excessively refined love of food, from the habits an earlier bearer of the name, Marcus Gavius Apicius, a Roman gourmet and lover of refined luxury who lived sometime in the 1st century AD, during the reign of Tiberius. He is sometimes erroneously asserted to be the author of the book that is pseudepigraphically attributed to him.

The use of boiled wine and honey, together with subtle spices and nuts, is typical of Roman cookery of the time and, with the exception of a few modern substitutions I have added to make things easier, this makes an authentic sausage that may well have been brought to Britain at the time of the Roman conquest.

Much of Roman cookery is offensive to our 21st century norms of cuisine; requiring us to, for example, ‘Begin with the well fermented womb of a ewe in her 5th year’. This sausage, however, is wholesome and quite delicious and well worth a try.

1lb Belly Pork
1lb Pork Shoulder (Keep meats cool in refrigerator until needed)
1 cup Pearl Barley
4 Leeks, finely chopped
6oz Fat, unsmoked bacon
½ cup Almonds, ground
¼ cup Pine nuts, ground
2 tsp Ground black pepper
2 tsp Salt
1 tsp Ground rosemary
2 tsp Lovage seeds (or 4 tsp celery seeds)
1½ tsp ‘Supaphos’ (Phosphate)
2½ cup Red wine
4oz Runny Honey
2tsp ‘Marigold’ vegetable stock
2 Raw eggs
Qty Husk as required


1 Wash & soak about 5m of hog casings with several changes of water.

2 Put the pearl barley in a pan with 3 parts by volume of water and bring to the boil. Simmer over a low heat for 1 – 1½ hours until tender. Top up the fluid level from time to time as the barley is very absorbent and can easily boil dry. Drain well and spread out on paper to cool and lose some of its moisture.

3 Prepare and wash the leeks and discard the tough green parts. Chop them fine in a blender using the wine as a wetting fluid.

4 Strain off as much of the wine as possible into a saucepan, add the stock powder, and reduce to about 20% by volume to give a syrupy consistency, then add the honey and set aside.

5 Chop the bacon into small pieces and fry until golden brown. Remove from the heat and add the wine/honey/stock mixture, all the herbs, spices and nuts, and stir well. Set aside to cool then sprinkle on the phosphate.

6 Grind the meat in a mincer using a ¼” plate cutter.

7 Whisk the eggs with a fork until smooth.

8 Combine all the ingredients well. If you find the resultant mixture is too wet, add husk until you have the desired consistency.

9 At this stage you can fry up a little patty to check the seasoning and adjust to taste if necessary.

10 Stuff into casings, and link at desired length.

I have drastically reduced the amount of salt in the original recipe and added some phosphate as I prefer the result. These things are a matter of personal taste in my view, and I leave it to the maker to decide.

I’ve made this sausage a few times now and found that a more full-flavoured, robust red wine works best.

I hope you enjoy the result, my contact details are below and I would love to hear from you with your thoughts.


Will Smith-Haddon

[wheels]

Will

That's an interesting recipe - I've added it to my (extremely long) 'to make' list.

You may want to remove your email address though as you're likely to get unwanted Spam.

Phil

[William2685]

Many thanks, Phil, how do I do that?

[wheels]

There should be an edit button at the top right hand side of your post - don't worry though, I've done it for you.

Phil

[spudeye]

Hi Will
I'm a newbie and will be that way until I die I'm sure. This recipe has some interesting additions, pearl barley for instance.
Almonds & pine nuts together, never tasted them together.
You mentioned that the mix maybe to wet, so does the end result have a firm moist texture or is it soft.

I have seen one other recipe for Roman Sausages and that was in Maynard Davies great book. Think they were discribed as semi or dry type

This is a must try for me, thanks for posting Will

cheers spudeye