Morcella Especial

Morcella (say "muh-sal-uh") is the Portuguese version of the blood puddings or blood sausages that show up in just about every major cultural cuisine. "Boudin Noir" to the French, "Black Pudding" to our British friends, "Blutwurst" to the Germans, "Soondae" to the Koreans and known by many other names to people from many other cultures. The stuff is universal.

I'm not going to pull punches here. It's made from blood and that tends to put people off. Even people who'll eat the rarest of rare meat will pass on morcella and its international kin. It is kind of an acquired taste. Most people I know that eat it started doing so as children and ended up liking it long before they learned what it was. Some, once they learned what it was, stopped eating it. Bummahs for them!

My earliest memories of morcella are the sandwiches my dad and mom used to make, or how my Portuguese grandmother used to mix it with scrambled eggs for breakfast. The latter I enjoyed again for breakfast when I was in the Azores in 2004 and it was still damn good!

Recently, the good people at Mello's Chourico in Fall River, MA asked me to come up with some recipes for their fine line of Portuguese sausage products. While anyone who reads Chop Onions, Boil Water knows, doing anything with chourico is easy because EVERYTHING IS BETTER WITH CHOURICO! Morcella presents a little more of a challenge.

So I did a little research on all the different international types of blood sausage (as evidenced in the introductory paragraph of this entry) and came up with a number of recipes to work from. For my first morcella recipe on Chop Onions, Boil Water I chose a traditional French preparation but of course used Portuguese blood sausage instead of boudin noir.

The result? It is delicious! That's not just my opinion but also my wife Michelle's. Prior to eating this dish, she was NOT a fan of morcella but Morcella Especial made a believer of her. She liked it a lot. So did my mom, who proclaimed it the "Best morcella ever!"

Why is it good? It's all about the green apples. They balance and harmonize with the flavor of the morcella to create something really delicious and different. In fact, if you're a little evil, you might even serve this without telling anyone what it is and fool more than a few people. In doing so, you could make some people angry, but hey that's a risk you take. One can have too many friends!

Try it friends, you'll be surprised!

Morcella Especial

1/2 morcella link (7 or 8 ozs.)
2 large tart green apples (cored, peeled and sliced into 12ths)
1 pound Yukon Gold potatoes (peeled and sliced thin)
4 tablespoons sweet butter
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1/4 cup white wine
2 Tbs fresh parsley (chopped)

Place the morcella in the freezer at least an hour before you are going to need it. This allows it to harden and makes it much easier to peel and slice.

Preheat your oven to 400°F.

Place a cast iron (or suitable facsimile) 10" skillet on a medium-high flame. Add 1 tablespoon of the sweet butter, allow it to melt and spread it around the pan. Immediately add the apple slices and sauté, turning frequently, until the edges of the apples begin to caramelize. Transfer the skillet to the oven and bake until tender (about 15 minutes).

Meanwhile, in a second skillet melt the remaining 3 tablespoons sweet butter over medium-high heat. Add the potato slices and fry, turning frequently, until they are golden on both sides. Add salt and pepper to taste and pour them over the baking apples.

Quickly deglaze the potato pan with the 1/4 cup of wine. Stir continually until the liquid is almost completely reduced, then pour the resulting liquid over the potato and apple mixture. Place the apple and potato mixture back in the oven and continue to bake for an additional 10 minutes.

While the potatoes and apples are baking, remove the frozen morcella from the freezer. Slice the link shallowly along its length and peel off and discard the skin. Slice the morcella in 1/8" slices and set aside.

When the apple and potato mixture finishes baking remove the pan from the oven and cover the entire apple and potato mixture in a layer of sliced morcella.

Place the mixture back in the oven and bake until lightly browned, crumbly and crispy on top, about 10 to 15 minutes.

Garnish with the chopped parsley and serve at once to surprised people.

Recipe: Chicken and Corn Stew

I have eaten some pretty strange things in my life. From my dad's side of the family there was morcella (pig's blood sausage) and all manner of odd things from the ocean including lapas (pronounced "lah-pizsh") which are small limpet-like creatures that adhere to rocks and themselves all over the world. These my father taught me to eat raw, first pulling them off the rock and then digging the animal from its shell with my finger and eating it live and raw. He also taught me how to get and eat mussels, clams, razor clams, periwinkles and conchs. I'm not complaining, they are all pretty tasty, raw or otherwise. So thanks dad those are good, but no thanks for making me eat a dollop of Vick's Vapor Rub when I was 7. What the hell were you thinking? I was only 7 but I could clearly see "for external use only" on the damn jar!

From my mom's side of the family I learned to eat the strangest things. My mom's father was part Native American and grew up on a New England farm during the depression. He was a bar room-brawling, tough-as-nails maniac. In the course of his life out of necessity, he learned to eat anything and he was lucky enough to have married a woman who could cook it all very well.

When I was a child it didn't take me or my cousins long to figure out one thing: DO NOT ASK WHAT YOU ARE EATING UNLESS YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW! Now your yuck level is directly related to the place you grew up and the means available to you. So for some of you, when I mention that rabbit stew and squirrel pies were staples, you're going to say yuck or yum. It depends on whether or not you were ever exposed to these two DELICIOUS dishes. So the hunters out there say, "what's the big deal?" The city folk say "Eeeeeeeeew!"

The stuff I ate at my grandparents ran the entire scale of the yuck factor. For instance one day I was presented with something that appeared to be turkey dinner. Except that the turkey was a deep reddish brown, kind of, but not exactly like beef. I had to know, so I had to ask. "Hey Pep, what is this?" "Go look in the oven" was his answer. I did, and what I saw looked like a red turkey with 4 drumsticks. Pep recognized the confusion on my face and replied "It's the raccoon your cousin Rocky shot yesterday." It was pretty good too as I remember it. Think of roast beef with a texture somewhere near turkey.

I ate a lot of things in that house. I can say with certainty that I DID eat: deer, goat, pig, sheep, rabbit, quail, duck, pheasant, and a host of other common acceptable food items. The more uncommon things that I know I ate there included: bear, woodchucks, squirrels, snapping turtle and raccoons. I THINK I ate possum and maybe muskrat there, but I am not sure. I'd LIKE to think I never ate skunk but again, I am not sure. Let me make one thing clear, it was all delicious. Both my grandmothers were incredible cooks (aren't everyone's?), and I wish I had some of their recipes.

You may be asking yourself what the relevancy to the recipe is? Just memories. This dish reminds me of the stuff my mom's mom used to make. Good, hearty, stick-to-your-ribs-I keep-my-family-healthy-old-school-Yankee-cooking. The perfect dish after a day of skiing or hunting, or shoveling the damn snow from the driveway for the 15th time in 4 days!

Recipe: Chicken & Corn Stew

3 lbs boneless chicken breast (cut into 1/2" chunks)
4 Tbs unsalted butter
1 Tbs olive oil
1-1/2 cup chopped onions
1-1/2 cup chopped carrots
1-1/2 cup chopped celery
2 lbs boiling potatoes (peeled and cut into 1/2" cubes)
1 clove of garlic (minced)
2 tsp fresh thyme (chopped)
2 Tbs flour
4 cups chicken broth (I use bouillon)
2-4 cups of water
2 cups super-sweet corn kernels
1 cup of heavy cream
4 green onions cut in 1/8" rings
3/4 to 1 cup of chopped cilantro
Salt and pepper to taste

Season chicken with salt and pepper.

Place butter and oil into a preheated pan set on a medium flame. Cook stirring lightly, until the foam from the butter disappears.

In small batches, brown the chicken well on all sides. Remove chicken to a waiting bowl as it browns, set aside and keep warm.

When all the chicken is removed, add onion, carrots and celery. Sauté until the onions are translucent.

Add the garlic and half the thyme. Continue to sauté stirring occasionally for a few minutes (be sure not to burn the garlic).

Add flour and stir in well, while cooking for 1 minute.

Pour in broth and water, being sure to blend or whisk it in well. Bring mixture to a boil.

Add the potatoes and return to boil. Cover, reduce heat and let simmer, stirring occasionally. Cook this way until the potatoes begin to get tender.

Add the sweet corn kernels, chicken (with any resulting juices) and cream, simmer uncovered until the stock begins to reduce.

Salt and pepper to taste, add the rest of the thyme, green onions and the cilantro.

Serve in deep bowls with a wedge of lime and biscuits on the side.

Coming Soon COBW 2.0

Hey folks, I know it has been a little while since I last posted a recipe or review. I just wanted to let everyone know that I've been busy working on Chop Onions, Boil Water Ver. 2.0

The new site is going to be a multichannel outlet for cooking world food at home. The basic blog will still be there as always and I'll add new recipes as I create or perfect them (my definition), but there will also be exciting new food areas, regional and specialty forums and channels and feeds from other great food resources out there.

I'm also want to offer folks the opportunity to register if they'd like to post their own recipes and create their own profiles within COBW. Maybe we can even start a little "World Food at Home" community.

So, I apologize for the delay of new posts, but promise that there is much more coming in the near future. Thank you for your interest and input and I look forward to trying some of your recipes in the future!

Websites We Love: ImportFood.com

Recommending ImportFood.com is easy because their tag line says it all: a "Complete Source of Authentic Thai Recipes, ingredients and cookware." Their not kidding either. They have an extensive selection of both fresh and prepared Thai ingredients as well as a large collection of Thai cookware and recipes. What really makes them stand out from similar online Thai grocers though is their recipe blog featuring many online videos.

A Thai food enthusiast is going to get lost in the many videos showing how to prepare recipes, other videos of street vendors doing their thing, and others depicting how ingredients are made and even some cultural offerings like a Thai wedding ceremony, etc.

ImportFood.com also limits their offerings to their e-mail list to real offers and news of new videos. You can join this list without the worry of being annoyed by your inbox being flooded with the nonsense we've come to expect from other online companies. Sign up without worry.

So let's look at the tally:

A.) An extensive selection of fresh and prepared Thai ingredients and authentic cookware.

B.) Lots of authentic recipes.

C.) Tons of interesting and educational online videos featuring Thai cooking and culture.

Yup! We love ImportFood.com for good reasons! Check them out!

From Chop Onions, Boil Water by Henry Krauzyk
http://www.choponionsboilwater.com

Cookbook Review: Vineyard Harvest by Tina Miller

As far as the Massachusetts Islands go, there are generally two kinds of people: Martha's Vineyard people and Nantucket people. I am a Nantucket person. There is magic for me there, and it's where I can relax. It's difficult for me to explain why, but mostly it has to do with the island's light, small size and general quiet compared to her larger sister. Not that Nantucket doesn't get busy, just that it's never as busy as Martha's Vineyard.

Preferring one over the other also doesn't mean I don't visit nor enjoy Martha's Vineyard, I do. There's a lot to experience and see there, and certainly plenty of good food. That's one of the reasons I initially purchased "Vineyard Harvest" by island Chef Tina Miller.

Featuring more than one hundred recipes that span a "year of good food on Martha's Vineyard" and colorfully splashed with the photography of Vineyard native Alison Shaw, Vineyard Harvest is an excellent and beautiful cookbook. It's well written and the background information really gives the reader a sense of the island, its people and the local flavor and cuisine. There's plenty of information regarding a host of details including a detailed explanation of Chef Tina Miller's favorite ingredients and kitchen implements. Something I found both insightful and uselful.

The recipes are excellent and their presentation and explanation will get anyone through most dishes. Of particular interest and influence to me were the recipes for "Vineyard Bouillabaisse", "Succotash Chowder", "Road House Gingerbread with Dark Rum Sauce" and several others. The bouillabaisse recipe alone has taken me in a few directions and is the basis for several recent and favorite personal recipes.

Vineyard Harvest is one of those cookbooks that transcends its genre and becomes something a little more than a cookbook. It is a unique look at the people, places and beauty that are Martha's Vineyard and it tells its story around a common thread of good people, native ingredients and great food. Nice job Chef Tina Miller! Fantastic photos Alison Shaw!

Cookbook Review: Vineyard Harvest by Tina Miller