Directions

Once comrade Stalin – may he rot in Hell – was grilling his son Vasilij for some drunken “disorderly conduct.”

– Do you think you’re Stalin? No!….Do you think I’m Stalin? No!

Pointing to his portrait on the wall, Stalin yelled:

– He’s Stalin!

The theme, of course, is how to distinguish appearance from reality and reality from appearance. The written records of our civilizations point out that the question hunted humans since the dawn of our conscious existence. Now as before, our honorable politicians and advertisement industry have been very skilled in perpetuating the cycle of confusion for the masses on these two distinct categories. The same misperception is often transmitted into the world of charcuterie. We fight over “authentic” recipes of countless “Polish”, “Hungarian”, “Calabrian” sausages, pointing to some arbitrarily selected standard that has been put on the wall as Plato’s ideal form. Some find such state of affairs necessary. Some – useful. I, on another hand, celebrate the validity of unending verity that negates the ideal form. After all, this is the age of Foucault and Derrida…

Plato is and finally dead.

Hence, this sausage belongs to the category of demonstrating a vulgar middle finger to the tyranny of One Authentic Recipe. Down with “Polish Sausages!” We all can make it in our own image! I admit, at times it a road to perdition, a highway to hell. At, if you know what you’re doing, most of the times you get a product that can put to shame any “authentic recipe. “ We, my friends, create our own reality…and that’s – our freedom, our duty, and our responsibility. As that French commie said, “we’re condemned to be free.”

As for the sausage:

Two Boston Butts. Necks hand-cut and cured separately of the rest. All received 1.5% sea salt, 0.25% Cure#1, 0.3% sugar. Three days of the fridge. Then – emulsified with 8% from the total weight back-fat, frozen home-made stock, and some of my herb-hot pepper infusion on vodka (1 year of infusion and around 1.5 in the freezer – a potent stuff). Quantity of the last two – as much as needed to achieve the proper texture. Also – 2% of dried oregano, added close to the end of emulsification. Oregano, of course, from last year’s harvest in my back-yard.

The rest is usual. Added those hand-cut pieced of the neck, stuffed in larger hog casings, rested overnight, smoked on pecan until 150F of internal temperature. Around 10 minutes in iced water. Fridge. Gone in one week.

These type of sausages greatly benefit from short — few days to one week – dry curing after the hot smoking. Yet, no one wanted to wait this time…