[insert dirty sausage joke here]

Madison.

As a fitting follow-up to the weekend's activities, the kitchen's been busy all week. Between making some goat cheese-filled ravioli to go with the fresh morels, testing out the new sausage stuffer, and baking many batches of cookies, it's been a dishwashing marathon.

Okay, so my involvement in the cookie-making process has been limited to eating the ones that look a little too damaged. Also the batter. Sharon's making them for the last class of the semester tomorrow, as a treat for her students, as well as some to take to the folks working the coffee cart on Saturday. Since we can't pay for coffee anymore, we have to resort to stuffing the tip jar and bringing the occasional bag of baked goods.

Earlier today, Sharon pointed out that I've been all kinds of busy with cooking experiments recently. (Think double entendres about meat and sausage.¹) The cured trout - with orange and black pepper - turned out very well, even if it is a little like fruit leather. (Delicious, but an intense orange you just don't usually associate with fish.) Down in the basement, the bresaola is slowly drying out, and - I hope - not growing anything toxic. And the last two nights have been devoted to chicken sausage.

In order to save time, I cut up the chickens the night before making the sausage, carefully stripping off the skin and fat. There's a classic French dish called a 'galantine,' which is essentially a chicken pate wrapped in the nearly intact skin, then gently poached, chilled, and sliced like a terrine. The trick of it is getting the skin off in one piece. One large, continuous piece. It's difficult to do properly, and I can appreciate that now. Since that wasn't my goal, though, I could take some shortcuts. In the end, the skin all went in a pot with a little bit of water, so I could render out the schmaltz.

It's like chicken-flavored butter. Better than it sounds.

Last night was the sausage-making process, using the new sausage stuffer. Having made four batches with the ever-frustrating KitchenAid stuffer - just a tube on the front of the grinding mechanism - I'd had enough. The grinder itself works like a charm, but stuffing is a long, agonizing process, and requires an odd sort of jury-rigging to make use of a stuffer that's more than a foot off the tabletop.

Prepping the sausage filling is quick and simple: grind the meat (chicken), fat (pork back fat), and any additional ingredients (roasted garlic, diced onion, mushrooms, salt) together; mix briefly to combine; bind with flavorful liquid (marsala wine). Then load into the sausage stuffer and fill the casings. What used to take more than an hour - or felt that way - took less than ten minutes with the new stuffer. It's my new favorite toy.

And, since it's heavy-duty stainless steel with a minimum of moving parts, well worth the investment.

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¹Like, but not including "It's a Sausage Fest!" This, of course, is destined to be emblazoned on a set of invitations for a summer barbecue.