saucisses et pommes de terre

15. Sausages a la catalane

I don't eat sausages all that often. Mostly because rarely do I make the effort to travel to a nice butcher--say, Peter G Bouchier in Toorak or Rob's British Butchery in Dandenong--that specialises in, or at least puts a lot of effort into, making nice sausages. A lot of sausages out there are miserable mystery bags of minced lips and arseholes and shit too horrific to have a name.

Happy with the Otway free range pork products I've tried so far, I decided, today, to give their sausages a go. For $16 per kilogram or thereabouts you can get their 'Irish' sausages--pure pork, in other words. $16 per kilogram for what are, at the end of the day, supermarket-grade sausages is comparable with Peter G Bouchier and Rob's offerings. And, too, more expensive than a lot Otway cuts, including the glorious belly, avaliable from butchers that sell them.

So. This a la catalane business. The name gives it away, I guess. Like many of Larousse Gastronomique's 'ethnic' recipes, it's not authentic. Not anything a Spaniard would recognise as Spanish. It is, like most of the ethnic recipes, a French take on the concept. An idea modified to suit French ingredients, tastes and techniques. A bastardisation, really.

Sausages a la catalane is a simple preparation. The recipe doesn't specify any particular variety of sausage but you couldn't go wrong with pure pork or beef sausages--or even veal or whatever. Something lightly seasoned, like your standard 'Italian' sausages or the French Toulouse., would work too. I don't think heavily seasoned sausages, such as chorizo or boerwors, would work at all. The sauce is fairly delicate--although this may be just in my kitchen, as the garlic I bought turned out to be a bit sad and I didn't trust the commercial broth (the unsalted variety was out of stock, see) to reduce the shit out of it.

To make sausages in the catalane style, you briefly fry some sausages (the book suggests using dripping as your frying medium) until golden all over and then set them aside. You add a couple of spoonfuls of flour, stir it until it takes on some colour and then introduce it to some white wine, stock and a small quantity of tomato paste. Simmer this for ten minutes and then strain it. Return the sausages to the pan along with some peeled, whole cloves of garlic. Pour the strained sauce into the pan and add a bouquet garni and a piece of dried orange peel. Simmer for thirty minutes.

Dried orange peel can be sourced from Chinese grocers as it's used, I'm told, in Sichuan cuisine. Sure, you can dry your own orange peel in a low oven or whatever--or maybe under the sun, even, I don't know--but when it's $1.30 for stuff that's perfectly fine (and fine in the way of most spices, not fine in the way of commerical stock) I wouldn't bother unless, you know, there are lots of oranges to be used up somehow.

The overpriced sausages were okay, I guess. Not bad. No. But no different to any other reasonable quality pork sausage. If I bothered making this dish again I'd probably muster up the energy to head out to Dandenong.

16. Potatoes au jus

This recipe reminds me, a bit, of Fergus Henderson's recipe for 'Orbs of Joy'.

Potatoes au jus is the sort of recipe that will make me, in the next week or two, actually get me to make my own brown stock. With a commercial broth, it's just sad. Insipid. The potatoes are soft and that's just swell, but they don't turn out as the recipe implies they should: soft and glazed with sticky, meaty goodness. Seriously. Don't waste your time or your potatoes unless you have some quality stock on hand.

You quarter some potatoes--peel them first, which I forgot too--and drop them into an oven-proof pan with some stock. You bring the stock the boil on the stove top and then place the pan, lid on, in the oven for 40 minutes at 200 degrees.

17. French beans a la lyonnaise

Cook the beans using Larousse's catch-all method and then saute them in a saucepan with some sliced onions (I admit that I kind of skimmed past the book's suggestion you use something like a 4:1 bean:onion ratio), which you've already softened. Let the beans take on a bit of colour and then season them with salt, pepper, parsley and vinegar.