Getting the good sausage
Ask me what my favourite convenience food is and I tell you that it is the sausage. At any given time, my fridge is full of sausages. I have all kinds: spicy Italian sausages, meaty but sweet Chinese sausages, pimenton packed chorizo from Portugal, little cocktail sausages which my wife wraps in rashers of bacon and then fries, Goan sausages full of vinegar and masala, and sliceable Thai sausages from Chiang Mai, waiting to be cut Canada Goose online into chunks and eaten with garlic and peanuts.
buy canada goose jacket Yups. Because in most of India, the good name of the sausage has been dragged canada goose coats through the mud and then attached to the tail of a chicken. It is virtually impossible to buy good sausages in India. buy canada goose jacket
canada goose factory sale The sausages of my canada goose clearance memory were made with pork fillings that had texture and tasteI know because I have tried. The biggest problem is that an increasingly large number of sausages in the Indian market are made from chicken. This is worse than terrible; it is also bizarre. Rare is the nation that bothers to make its sausages with minced chicken. As we all know, chicken is not the most flavourful meat and it is particularly unsuited for sausages. And yet, manufacturer after manufacturer will finely mince poor quality, industrially reared chicken and then shape the meat into a nasty little torpedo. canada goose factory sale
canada goose Oddly enough, the worst sausages in India are served at so called deluxe hotels. Most hotel chefs prefer chicken sausages, canada goose black friday sale positive proof, if any were needed, that they have no clue what a sausage should taste like. canada goose
Why do they do this? I am told that in the old days, chefs were taught to be careful of all pork because it went off easily and sometimes carried parasites. So chicken seemed safest, even Canada Goose Parka if it was tasteless. The problem is that even now, when it is easy to source pork that is hygienically reared, chefs still stick to chicken sausages.
canada goose uk black friday While researching this piece, I wandered around cold storages and grocers in Delhi, buying up whatever Indian sausages were available. canada goose uk black friday
The Northern Thai Sausage is a fresh sausage available at buy canada goose jacket the Tops supermarket canada goose coats on sale branches in BangkokEvery single sausage (including those recommended by five star hotel chefs as pork brands was utterly revolting. All were tasteless and some had a nasty synthetic texture as though someone had filled a length of pipe with a rubber solution (or Fevicol or Quick Fix) and allowed it to solidify.
canada goose black friday sale As I went from one tasteless rubber torpedo to another, I thought back to my childhood. The sausages of my memory were flavourful and juicy, made with pork fillings that had texture and taste. How, in this age of globalisation, was it possible that sausage quality had actually dropped all over India? canada goose black friday sale
The answer seemed to be that in the pre liberalisation era, Big Meat had still not arrived. It was a time when chickens were free range, and buy canada goose jacket cheap when small piggeries raised their own animals and either made the sausages themselves or gave their pork to butchers to make small batches of sausages by hand. There was no mechanisation and the meat processing industry had not taken off.
canada goose clearance sale Now, in the age of Big Meat, manufacturers care more about increasing their profit margins than they do about taste and quality. canada goose clearance sale
canada goose coats on sale It is interesting that at some hotels, where the kitchen is run by quality conscious chefs, the sausages are either imported or made on the premises. For years, I went to Celini at the Grand Hyatt Mumbai for the sausages because they were made in house. At the Leela Gurgaon, Ramon Salto, the son of a butcher, would not use any chorizo style sausages he did not make himself. Manu Chandra makes his own merguez and chorizo for his restaurants. canada goose coats on sale
cheap Canada Goose If you know a good artisanal sausage maker, then you will be fortunate enough to be spared the plastic torpedos of Big MeatAnd then there is the example of the Oberoi chain. Two decades ago, fed up of questions about the provenance of the charcuterie and weary of the crap sausages available in the market, cheap Canada Goose the Oberois set up their own deli unit. cheap Canada Goose
canada goose store To this day, they import canada goose pork canada goose deals from Australia and Holland, their chefs chop it themselves and the Oberois canada goose clearance sale then make the best artisanal sausages in India from high quality pork. It meant not only for their own restaurants but also for retail sales at the delis in their canadian goose jacket hotels. canada goose store
Canada Goose sale All of which begs the question: if the Oberois can make their own sausages and if many individual chefs have identified the problem, then why are the majority of the chefs in India hotel sector content to serve rubbish industrial sausages? Canada Goose sale
I cannot be certain what the answer is. But I pretty sure it does not reflect well on India five star chefs.
Canada Goose Online So what do you do if you want to eat good sausages in India? Well, there is always the Oberoi option. Some food stores will sell imported sausages. And if you know a good artisanal sausage maker then you will be fortunate enough to be spared the plastic torpedos of Big Meat. Canada Goose Online
Canada Goose Coats On Sale The Goan chorise (a descendant of the Portuguese chorizo) at The Bombay Canteen Canada Goose Coats On Sale
Alternatively, you can look for the delicious Goan chorise (a descendant of the Portuguese chorizo) which is always made by artisans, and which more and more chefs seem to be sourcing. Thomas Zacharias gets it for The Bombay Canteen and O Pedro. Manu Chandra serves the real thing at many of his restaurants. (Though Manu may well be making his own.) So do many others.
Margao Choriz at O Pedro, Mumbai
Canada Goose online If you can get your hands on good sausages, what should you do? Canada Goose online
canada goose coats Well, speaking canada goose outlet for myself, I nearly always look for something interesting to do with sausages. This is a lesson I may have learnt from my mother who, though she was hardly a passionate cook, had Canada Goose Outlet perfected an Indian style curry made with chunks of pork sausage sourced from a local cold storage in Mumbai. canada goose coats
Canada Goose Outlet http://www.mycanadagoosejacket.org Of late, I have been experimenting with the use of sausages to flavour rice. Most Goans are familiar with the idea of a chorise pulao (though they may call it something else) in which the white rice is streaked red from the vinegar as it escapes the sausages in the pan and in which, the fat from the chorise coats each grain of rice even as canada goose store the masalas flavour the pulao. Canada Goose Outlet
If you are fortunate enough to gain access to more unusual sausages, then the possibilities are endless. One of the advantages of going to Bangkok so often is that my wife and I are able to buy Thai sausages fairly regularly. There is one sausage in particular easily available at branches of the Tops supermarket chain called a Northern Thai Sausage that we always bring back. (This is a fresh sausage, unlike the salami style Chiang Mai Sausage which I also like).