Happy Entrails to You…
No! It’s not a joke, it’s an adventure!
I happen to believe one should firmly embrace one’s ancestors’ culinary traditions. Especially when one has ancestors who interbred, had bad teeth, killed one another off on a regular basis, and consumed far too many unnervingly rich, meat-based dishes.
I am, of course, talking about the Plantagenets. We’ve got a chart somewhere around here. On it, I can draw a rather crooked line from me back to Henry II. Not that I particularly want to be related to the king who offed Thomas Becket, but I am happy to claim a few other connections, including the fellow on the right here, who was, despite what those bratty Tudors say, a pretty decent guy.
I bet he ate some damned tasty food before riding off into battle.
Like this crazy thing Chopper’s making.
It looks like a sausage, but he tells me it’s called Black Pudding. I am told it is tasty and not at all dangerous. Not like that Black Pudding that enveloped and digested Timion Vayla, my second level paladin in the Dungeon of Aeras Kinth. Boy, was that a bad night.
No, this Black Pudding is made from tasty things like oatmeal and onions. Oh, and pig’s blood. Lots of pig’s blood. Turns out our local Asian market sells pig’s blood by the pint, and when Chopper made this discovery, I knew we were left with only two choices: Black Pudding or a reenactment of the prom night sequence from Carrie. Since the latter would mean a Chopper impersonation of John Travolta, we opted for the Black Pudding.
Now, I haven’t tasted it yet, so I can’t tell you anything about the results. I can tell you that it’s quite black (the hour and a half plus in the oven congealed the blood quite nicely), and the sausage stuffing procedure was quite messy. So messy, in fact, I may have give up that fantasy I have about CSI Warrick Brown showing up at the door with a spray bottle of Luminol. Far, far too risky.
On the bright side, no prom dresses were ruined in the procedure, and I’d like to think we did my Plantagenet ancestors proud. Especially the ones who preferred a good feast over a good beheading.
(Next: we devour the happy entrails and live to tell the tale.)
I await the verdict. Being a Northern (England) lassie, I love black pudding but wouldn’t dream of making it from scratch.
Next, why not try haggis? That’s even better.
I am, as always, tremendously impressed by the way that you and Chopper throw yourselves into these things. I understand that black pudding is considered by some to be an essential part of a full English breakfast, but I’ve never tasted it. I await the verdict as well.
It’s good to see y’all back.
I can’t see your pictures. Is that a lucky thing?
Hey denzylle, stay tuned. We’ve a rather uncanny haggis-like concoction in our post queue. :-)
Thanks, Kimberly! It’s good to be back. Chopper cooked up the black pudding in a dish last night and it was fantastic. We’re in the middle of catering a dinner for friends today, but with a little luck I’ll have a report up soon.
CC: Hmmm… I’d say that’s rather unlucky. Question — are all the pictures not here or just some? There should be two on this post (or rather one pic and one drawing) and then down below the poll & the map there’s the old pic from the Ramen post. The top two are hosted on the belly-timber server; the ramen is on my Flickr account. That one may have issues because I need to pony up the funds to reactivate my pro-level account. The ones on my server should only be a problem if you’re from MySpace and you’re trying to steal them. :-P Otherwise, I’m baffled and I’ll have to investigate further.
When I eat a cooked breakfast in a hotel or restaurant, I like black pudding with my bacon, egg, mushrooms, tomatoes, etc.
However, when I cook b/p at home – either I saute it with apple slices and fried bread, or else I cook it in the oven with sausages, parsnips, onions and gravy.
In the North of England and Scotland, you can get different kinds of b/p (and white pudding) – not so much so here in London. I like the spicy ones.
Ms D: Just this post. Got those little blue question-marky things that Mac does when an image is unavailable. All your other stuff is visible.
Hey! How you Doin’?!
I am sorry for Cookiecrumb – I can see chopper’s huge sausage all the way from here in San Fracnisco. What a comeback post. Wonderful stuff – thank you both for sharing with the world. Who needs to call it Boudin Noir when you could call it Black Sausage instead?
Cheers
sam
I mean black pudding – duh – sorry – having written over 50 entries up so far round up fatigue is starting to set in.
Miss Chief saw the entrail picture and said, “Aaaaaaaah! Snake!”
Just thought you’d like to know. :-)
All better now. OMG, that is an awesome tubular hunk of blood-soaked good eatin’.
denzylle, we had leftover black pudding in a scramble yesterday morning — very tasty! I do have a second variation to post, but I need to get Chopper to write out the recipe. ‘Tis hard to do with his current work schedule. I love the notion of using the pud with apples. We will have to try that as well (yes, we’ve got more left!)
CC: Doing… hmm. Complicated question. I may take a week’s worth of posts just to answer that. (Short answer: busy. Slightly longer answer: better now than in February.)
Sam, I see you haven’t lost an ounce of cheekiness while I was away! :-P Fantabulous job on the round-up, btw. I’ll link to it in my follow up post. (Soon as I get that durn recipe…)
Black Handed Pants: that is the cutest ever. Miss Chief is adorable, she is.
CC: Good, my cunning plan to keep you in suspense for a day worked. (In truth, I just did a code tweak. I’d upgraded to Wordpress 2.1.3 and I believe it changed the doctype and your Mac was being far more strict about reading the code than my PC. I simply made the code strict to match doctype(like I should have done in the first place). Yeah, yeah, I know: technobabble talk is so damned exciting. It was the bloody self-sealing stem bolts, out of alignment and causing a malfunction in the phase modulator, yet again.
Gross. I can eat anything, and am a pretty good cook, but…nope. Saw the black pudding in Wales last summer on the “breakfast bar” alongside the yogurt. Mmmm…nope. But it’s a great post!
Tasty post. Too bad kellypea, you are missing out. More for the rest of us I guess. Have never had BP with apples but sounds intriguing. There is a spot in LA that serves Morcilla (a Spanish blood sausage) with apples and figs. We always get that as a little breakfast appetizer. Great post, happy to have found it.
Oh you are brave. My grandmother is British and is always telling us about how we should eat British food, but the furthest I can go is Yorkshire Pudding. Haven’t had the stomach to experiment much further! Love your blog:)
We get Soondae (Korean blood sausage) at a local Korean place. It’s not bad but not something I’d go out of my way for.
I think this would appear more appetizing when you cut them up like lap cheong aka chinese sausage, mini chinese pork-links haha.. yums :)
Don’t worry, kellypea, I feel the same way about brussels sprouts. :-P
2nd-favorite: with figs? That sounds extra good. Something to think about when our figs trees are ready for the harvest.
Hey Lizzy, Chopper’s the brave one. I just watch. Oh, wait. I eat too. I guess that makes me a bit brave, eh?
Hi Barbara. I haven’t heard of Soondae. Come to think of it, I don’t know if I’ve ever had Korean food around here. I should remedy that oversight.
MeltingWok: I looove lap cheong. Not that this tastes anything like it, of course…