Sausage... It's a Tradition!

It's currently 4am in Venice - I was having trouble getting to sleep tonight, I think it is the excitement of knowing that all the sales are on tomorrow  TODAY (I just have to wait about 5 hours for the shops to open!), and I am very eager to go SHOPPING!

Due to my lack of sleep tonight, I have cracked open a bottle of rose` - Duchess Lia's Fragolino to be precise... it's cheap, but not nasty! An Italian red champagne that actually tastes really good, and the fragrance of the strawberry in this bubbly red is enchanting - a nice drop for the sweet tooth like me!

So when in the Venice winter, drinking champagne and waiting to shop at 4 o'clock in the morning, with frosty snow residue outside - what more excuse do you need to BLOG ON?!

Tonight.. I want to talk about sausage! It's a tradition of Italy, even in Australia the Italian community gets together in the winter time to process the remains of a dead pig, stuff it into the intestines of a sheep and dry it out in the cold for weeks on end to make that perfect salsiccia. (yes, I know I made it sound a bit rank, but really, it's wonderful in many ways - on pizza, fried up with some fresh bread, thrown into a pasta sauce, on its own, or even with a cheese platter... these dried sausage have so many uses!) But here is a sausage experience that was totally new to me-

After Christmas we organised a 'catch up' lunch with friends. As everyone was so busy with Xmas and family things... Patrizia brought along a traditional dish from Veneto (that's the region of Venice and surrounds) for the occasion.. it's called 'Musetto' - also known as 'Cotechino' ~ In northern Italy (the Veneto region) this sausage is made with coarsely chopped pork rind, lean pork, and pork fatback seasoned with salt, pepper, cloves, and cinnamon, then cured for three weeks. A very typical dish in this time of year.

We served it up with some baked polenta, and spinach... then added either 'senape' (mustard) or 'kern' (horseradish sauce - definitely my preference as it was very spicy and wasabi-like!)

The flavour in this Musetto was amazing - my mum used to cook up very strange foods for my father as he liked to eat odd things (this is very normal for people of the Lazio Region in Italy, and my dad was from Civitavecchia, Roma - where basically they will pick something up from the ground, cook it and eat it) ~ I guess this is where my taste buds have derived and my adventurous food antics ~ One of Dad's particular favourite dishes was Pig's Trotters (yes, literally Pig's Feet). Mum would boil them up with salt, and they had such a delicious piggy taste - I'm not really sure how else I can describe it! The trotters were always so sticky and chewy and this Musetto had a very similar taste, without the sticky and chewy sensation.

I really am amazed by the new food I experience in Italy almost daily, things I never thought of or didn't even know existed. Even though I have grown up with a lot of Italian food, and traditions, there is always so much more to learn!