Bloody Nora-drenaline feast

The very fine butchers of Katherine ‘Eat beef ya bastard’ fame has some zany produce, not least litre containers of pigs blood. Now, when I bought this, I also bought some back fat with the plan to make some black pudding, something as yet unexplored. Cut to about 2 years later……

There is a bit of a lack of fine black stuff round these parts, so when needs must, refer to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Now I have to say I love Hugh a great deal, but his quantities for black pudding seemed a bit awry- 2litres of blood and 500g EACH of pearl barley and oatmeal, and 1kg of back fat, and 1kg of onions.

I have to say I I didn’t weigh a thing. I soaked a cup of pinhead oatmeal overnight and then de-skinned the back fat, possibly 250-300g, and it looked about right. In it all went with a tablespoon of salt, a big grind of white and black pepper and a line of allspice (snort).

This is where it got a bit like a bad resus- pour in the blood. It’s interesting what the sight of a lot of blood does- I did warn my son, and I wish I hadn’t  fed him the line, but he wasn’t keen. He did take about 30 photos of me wrestling with the stuff though.

After clogging up one funnel I created one out of a Ginger cordial bottle, chopped off to make a cone, which worked pretty bloody well (there I go again). After tying one end of the casings up, it filled up like a dream to produce the coiled black hole- no light was coming out of this. Amazing. It was a bit fiddly to get rid of the air, which I didn’t succeed at 100%, but 95%…..

Now, one tip from Hugh was to gently poach them, but more importantly, when they burst, a little bit of you dies…..

So, bring on the gadget, yes, the sous vide. How about 80C- why not, that should clot the blood.

Lo and behold it worked- by the time the temperature was back up to 80C, they felt pretty solid, so out they came.

Beast 2 is keen, but no1, despite his liking for it as a toddler wasn’t quite so enamered. Steve and I enjoyed a post MTB ride snack, shown, Fresh bread, big coffee, marmalade, OJ and Worcester sauce. Wow.

So next time? May s few onions and perhaps a French style boudin with lots of cream? Or Spanish style with rice a smoked paprika?? Getting hungry just thinking about this……