Rush Rush Rush...

  

   OMG, it was such a busy week, I was on TV twice this week my friends... Yayyyy... Yep, you heard me right, I was on TV, nope it is not my show unfortunately.... yet... :) May be one day... Anyways I was in the audience for the Nate Show, "Nate Berkus", that cute, decorator guy from the Oprah Show, yes... now he has his own show, so last Tuesday we went to see his show at the studio, it was fun, I actually won the dance contest, shaking my bootie... :))) and I got a t-shirt... Yayyyyy... and then the very same night we went to see a new Broadway show. It was great, we had so much fun.

    Yesterday was the only slow paced day, so I had some time for myself. It's been a while that I was planning on making a Turkish sausage, called "Sucuk". It usually is made with beef and lamb together, lots of cumin, black pepper, garlic, lots of... lots of garlic, and definitely unrefined sea salt. So I decided to bring it to the life that "Sucuk" making process.

     I live in a neighborhood that you can easily find the "casings" for the homemade sausages in the specialty food stores around. I am not talking about the casings usually used for making the regular sausages, because "Sucuk" requires a special kind, "lamb casings", not the "hog casings", anyways, so I got my lamb casings. I have an electric meat grinder, so I bought the beef and lamb chunks with around 30% fat, and I ground the meat together, about 4,5- 5lbs, added about 20 to 25 cloves of garlic (crushed in the mortar with salt), 2-3 tbsp cumin, 2-3tbsp unrefined sea salt, 1-2 tbsp black pepper, 2tbsp mixed hot and sweet paprika, 1tsp allspice, mixed them well, got down and dirty and kneaded that mixture about an hour, seriously an hour...  after all that kneading process I let that mixture sit in the room temperature about an hour, than covered it with plastic film and refrigerate overnight. The next day I soaked the casings in the warm water, while the casings were getting ready; I took the mixture from the fridge, and kneaded another 20 minutes. After the kneading was finished, I put together the sausage attachment to the meat grinder and started filling the casings with the meat mixture.

Resting...

You have to be really careful for not the make holes in the casings, because they usually are pretty thin, and they just burst. So I stuffed my casings with the mixture, and I tied the ends with the kitchen twine. I lined the sausages on a trey on the kitchen counter, and pressed them to get the air bubbles, and burst the bubbles with a very skinny needle. Don't forget, we are not trying to make holes, just a little poke to get the air out, once the bubbles are out the sausages were ready to hang to dry. I know it is a long procedure, but hey… it is homemade, and let me tell you, nothing is tastier and more nostalgic then anything homemade. It just reminds me home...

They are hanging around... :)))

    Oh, I almost forgot to tell you, the second time I was on TV, actually was this morning on Wendy Williams Show, it was so good and juicy with all that gossip and the cast from the Logo TV show A-List, fun fun fun..., as she says " How you doin?"
    Have a wonderful week my dear friends... :)