Add spice to your life with sausages

"Do you want to learn to make sausages?"

I have to admit, deep in my heart, it's questions like this that add spice to my life.

So when my Chinese neighbor, Miranda, asked me to join her parents and prepare sausages, I immediately agreed but gave no further thought to how they would actually be made.

In cooking, knowing what you're going to do ahead of time is crucial. I've been caught a few times by not reading a recipe through completely, and finding out that I should have begun to make it the night before so it could marinade, or worse, rise properly!

Sausages, in Australia, have until quite recently had a terrible reputation as "mystery bags", liable to contain more than just meat. There were many tales of how sawdust, offal and other unsavory ingredients were being ground up to fill their skins, and swell the coffers of unscrupulous butchers.

These days, thanks to food standards laws, they've evolved beyond being made of scraps, and are now being produced to gourmet standards.

Still, I wasn't sure what these sausages were going to be made with, so I did a bit of looking around. The strings of sausages I'd seen drying locally were made of pork and spices, then left outside in all weather for dust to gather on - something that doesn't really appeal to me.

Then another awful thought crossed my mind. What if they're going to make very fresh sausages - like those in southern France and Italy? They start with killing a live pig.

Visions of squeals and flashing knives passed through my dreams. I don't think I'm ready for that.

Luckily for me, there was no pig butchering, only a mixture to be made out of coarsely minced pork. Added to it was finely chopped fresh ginger and onion, a good slurp of Chinese dark cooking wine and Dynasty dry red wine, some sage and marjoram, and some dried bread crumbs, seasoned with salt and sugar for balance. Miranda's mother added some water to the mixture, as it was a little dry.

Now came the tricky part - getting the mixture into the casing, which in this case was pigs' intestinal lining. This fine, elastic tubing almost resembles latex glove material, and was carefully eased up around the neck of the filler - an empty Coke bottle, with the bottom cut out of it.

There is nothing terribly technical about sausage making.

The empty bottle was filled with the mixture, which was then squeezed down into the casing, creating long, thick sausages, which were quickly twisted into individual links.

I asked Miranda where her parents had learned to make sausages, hoping that it would be a traditional craft, handed down through the generations.

"From the Internet," she laughed, "they're hooked on the Web, and trying out new things!"

For a long, long time I'd wanted to make sausages, but hadn't dared to take the risk, thinking that they'd be complicated and require specialist equipment.

Now, thanks to a simple demonstration, and an even simpler piece of equipment, I can make my own.

Perhaps the best lesson that I learned from making sausages is that we shouldn't be afraid to try new things, and to take a chance.

So, the next time your Chinese friends ask you to take part in something different, jump at the chance! You'll more than likely have fun, or pick up a few new skills.

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