Wild Pork Sauages with Leek and Potato Pie

Wild Pork Sausages and Leek and Potato Pie

Tonight for dinner I cooked Harmony Foods Wild Boar Sausages. These were purchased from Moore Wilsons. They won a Gold Award at the NZ Sausage Awards in 2010.

 

The label on the packaging says: Razor Back NZ Wild Boar. Bred in the open pastures of NZ. Razor Back NZ Wild Boar is the real taste experience. Razor Back NZ wild Boar is best savoured with friends and a full bodied red wine.

Call me picky, but my experience of wild pigs is scrub and bush. I realise the pigs do go down to the river flats to feed, however open pastures is more of a marketing phrase than reality. Or are these wild (?) boar kept in pastures? However this is not the key point.

These are very good pork sausages. They are coarse and meaty. There is a hint of fennel to add to the flavour. You can see the odd fennel seed in the meat. There is also some bacon as part of the meat. They are very good eating.

I really enjoy a cold sausage the following day. These will make great eating cold.  

The kids liked the sausages, one was very keen, the other two moderately keen.

Cost per kilo: $20.95

 

I served the sausages with a new recipe I had not made before, Gooey Leek, Potato and Vintage Cheddar Pie. This came from a cook book I got for my birthday; Pie by Dean Brettschneider. The pie I made used Edam cheese as opposed to vintage cheddar. This went down well with the family. The leeks and potatoes are mixed with a sauce of mustard, egg, sour cream and cheese. It is a gooey pie. And gooey is good.

 

 

The pie held together well, it was very nice to eat. I will make this again. Also in the book is a Sausage, Sun-dried Tomato and Potato Tart. This recipe is a bit more complicated and would take longer to cook, watch for a new posting when this gets cooked.

Black Pudding at Dockside

Black Pudding at Dockside

We were invited to a friend’s 50^th birthday lunch at Dockside. This was on Saturday. What a fantastic day. No wind, bright sunshine, warm spring temperatures. It was a leisurely lunch with no kids. They would have been itching to move on after a period of time, well before we would have been ready. Great weather, even better company. We were there for four hours and when we got back to car there was a present on the windscreen, a parking ticket. No worries it was worth the small price to exceed the parking time.

The group ordered a platter to start. It had tasty morsels of chorizo as part of a wide array of quality food. Lots of nice seafood. A good start.

 

For the main I ordered black pudding with sautéed potatoes and spinach, tomato relish, fresh egg and hollandaise sauce. To be blunt; I was underwhelmed. This was a very average dish. The black pudding was like sausage meat, well it is sausage meat, to put a positive description, I would describe the taste as delicate and refined. The sautéed potatoes and spinach were nice and well done. I thought the egg lacked flavour.

So a great lunch that could have been better if the food matched the quality of the conversation and weather.

As we left we remarked how wonderful it was to have lunch without the kids. The leisurely, unhurried approach to lunch, without children is something we have not done for a long time.  

The best chicken sausages ever

The best chicken sausages ever

Does anyone remember the organic chicken sausages that use to be sold by Moore Wilsons? They were in the loose section of the sausage serving section. They were plump chicken sausages that tasted like real chicken. I think the makers name was Heuval.

Moore Wilson stopped stocking these sausages a couple of years ago, maybe longer? When I enquired about the sausages not being stocked any more the response I received was: They go off too quickly, there is no preservative, so the shelf life was too short.”

This was a real shame as they were by a considerable margin the best chicken sausages I have ever tasted.

I have searched the internet and come to a site of organic chicken farm, Heuvals. The web address no longer works, watch this blog as I attempt to see it these beauties of sausages are still made.

And to add to my woe, the most viewed posting on this blog is the one entitled; And meanwhile my wife just bakes." Just goes to show, there is more interest in baking than sausages.

Happy eating.

 

Lamb Merquez

Lamb Merquez Cameron Harrison Butchers

These are good (not great) sausages. They come from Cameron Harrison Butchers. A little feed of four sasuages was consumed as a snack, over the last few days. They are mildly spiced. There are some hot spcies used, howeverly this is down sparingly, to arrive at a mild flavour. However I would call these a subtle flavour, certainly down the mild end of the continium. The main spice I identified was red chilli. The texture of the sausage is medium. When I asked the butcher what was in them, he said it was a secret and only his boss knows this information. If the boss dies and this information goes to the grave with him, it would not be a great loss to the culimary world.

I will buy these sausages again, when I want to add more variety to my sausage eating.

No comments from the kids, all the sausages were eaten by me.

Price per kilo: $19.95

Meat and Three Veg

Mediterranean Lamb and Continental Garlic Sausages

Two reviews today.

Both are from the Island Bay Butchery. Dinner was sausage and three vege. Time to let the culinary fare run wild.

 

The Mediterranean Lamb sausages are thin and long. They taste great and have a medium texture. They have coriander; one of my favourite herbs, and cinnamon to complement the flavour of the lamb. I have asked what else in the sausage, the response I received from the butcher was, “Only the boss knows the secret ingredients.” Maybe there is a line in marketing these sausages as 11 secret herbs and spices.    

And of course every review gets a mention of the kids view on these sausages. They will eat them but not all that keen. So you know what that means, more for me.

Cost per kilo: $19.95

 

The Continental Garlic sausages are the size of a breakfast sausage. When cooking these sausages a lot of fat come out. Too much for my liking. You should never pierce the skin of the sausage while cooking. The fat helps the sausage to cook and enhances the flavour.

The Continental Garlic sausage is a finely ground sausage. The primarily flavour is garlic, these are a great everyday sausage to eat.

The kids prefer these and they all disappeared.

Cost per kilo: $19.95

And the serving of the meal is pictured at the beginning of the this post. Although I like food I would not class myself as a gastronome. I have advanced on how my mother, now in her eighties, would have served this meal. She would have boiled all the vege, for a long time, and then served. One of my friends attended cooking classes at a local restaurant, one tip to making quality mashed potatoes was to put the drained potatoes back on heat for 30 seconds to remove more moisture from the pot. I now do this and with the butter, milk and pepper for flavour it makes good mash.

An aside: The best mashed potato I have ever had was at Ortega Fish Shack. It was fantastic.  

The carrots had honey added at the end. The broccoli was served fresh from the pot.

The family enjoyed the meal.