blood sausage my colleague brought to work some meat and apple strudel-like dishes, food cooked in his wife's home country of estonia. the meat and apples were tasty, but the wontonlike wrapper was a little dry - prolly because he had to commute from his house in the early chicago winter. it was actually filling and good, but unfortunately failed to make a mark on my palette. i ate six pieces anyways, ahahahaha.

he offered the last of it to our overnight staffer and mentioned a traditional estonian dish called blood sausage. he has no adjectives for it, "it's just so... oh..." and his eyes widen and he shakes his head. he says it's a sausage filled with meat and, well, blood.

i'm curious about the dish now, but to save us from mocking his ancestry, he says he won't bring any, ahaha. here's a recipe:

Blood sausage

1250 g barley grouts
750 g meat (bacon)
200 g onions
salt, pepper
marjoram, oregano, caraway
½ l blood
about 10 metres intestines

Put washed grouts into hot salted water and boil to half-soft. Cut bacon into little pieces and fry it with sliced onion until they are light yellow, add to the grouts and boil until the mixture is soft. Let the mixture cool and add blood and seasoning. Fill the intestines with the mixture but not hard because blood and grouts swell when the sausages boil. Tie the ends of the sausages with soft string. Put the sausages into lukewarm water and boil them slowly for about 30 minutes. Cool the ready sausages quickly down and keep them in a cold place. Bake or fry before serving. Before frying, put the sausages into warm water. Serve with fried bacon, cowberry or cranberry jam or pumpkin salad.

An older tradition of Estonians was to make white sausage; later blood sausage became popular. White sausage has the same ingredients, except for blood. [ more ]

  ¶ 12/02/2004 11:31:00 PM