fridaynightdinnerbox: Portugal: morcela con favas, Portuguese blood sausage with freshly picked broad beans & peas

In the kitchen at Monte Saraz, Rosa tells me how in December each year the families of her village come together to kill their pigs. Rosa takes care of the cooking & housekeeping here at Monte Saraz, a restored Roman army barracks now functioning as a pousada, a hotel of sorts, located just outside the small village of Monsaraz, Alentejo province, a short drive from the Spanish border. There's a sense of age & time, historic charm, resting on the place. A Roman arch still stands in the garden, an inscribed marble frames one of the doors, water is drawn from an ancient well...twisted gnarly olive trees & groves of lemon & clementine, bright red poppies & lavendar growing wild in the long grass...blue skies & a castle on the hill. Yeah, it's choice.

We are staying a week before Jason & Lucy's wedding, & guests are arriving from New Zealand & Australia, Canada, USA & the UK, all over the world, to join us here in the days leading up to the celebration. For my part, I've found Rosa in her the kitchen & here I will stay, learning Portuguese dishes & cooking for everyone. It's a real coming together, loads of people to help out peeling onions or chopping parsley, driving to the shop, opening bottles of Alentejo vino tinto, having a good time.

The black pig, Alentejano, which Rosa is referring to is famous in this region. In most villages here families raise their own animals, grazing them amongst the oak & cork trees which grow in the surrounding hills. Fattened on an abundance of acorns, they are slaughtered following the traditional method, away from the industrial abbatoirs & increasingly strict regulations; a modernising trend which is seeing such practices slowly disappear from rural village life all over Europe.

And it is a village affair. Taking place during the winter, around December, in time for the festive season, families come together. Helping each other, each person has a role, plays their part. It takes five men to tie the pig down & hold it in place, to stretch it out while its throat is cut & to collect the blood which at first spurts, then pulses, then bleeds draining into a waiting bucket. Someone stirs the blood to stop it coagulating, spices & seasoning are added, onions, chunks of meat from the neck & cheek, in some cases rice or oats, while alongside someone else is responsible for the thorough cleaning of the pig's intestines, washing & rinsing them repeatedly until they are ready to be filled with the blood mixture & tied off. Then the morcela & chorizo are hung in the chimney to dry & cure in smoke.

Our morcela came from a butcher, Talho Luis & Edgar, in Lisbon (Rua de Graça, 170). In fact, for the three weeks we stayed in Portugal, the meat for all our cooking came from this one supplier. Although finding a butcher was on our to do list while we were in the city, this particular place we discovered purely by chance. At the time, if memory serves, we were actually looking for a bar; mainly we were drinking. Anyway, we spied the beaded metal curtains of the butcher shop, it was busy & they were right into it, proudly Portuguese, generous with their time & with plenty of advice on how best to prepare the dishes we mentioned. We talked for a long time about what was available & what we intended to cook. We hand picked our joints & they were inspected, set aside & hung for us until we were ready to return & collect. Each time we visited, we left loaded with pork loin & beef fillet, the famous secreto, & of course charcuterie.

Morcela con Favas
Ingredients:

2 morcela sausages

a handful of broad beans, a handful of fresh peas

fresh parsley & coriander, roughly chopped

good squeeze of lemon juice & a healthy dollop of quality virgin olive oil

salt

Method:

*fill a saucepan with water & put it on the boil;

*shell the peas & (broad beans);

*blanch the peas & beans in boiling water for 30 seconds, then refresh them in iced water to stop the cooking process completely, drain & set aside in a bowl;

*put the water back on the boil, to be ready for the 2nd stage of boiling to follow.

*slice the morcela into pieces roughly 1/2 an inch thick;

*in a hot pan, saute the slices well, turning to form a grilled crust on both sides;

*cool the sausage sufficiently to allow the slices to be broken up into a salad bowl, the morcela should however still be warm.

*stage 2 veg: drop the favas (broad beans) into the boiling water for 30 seconds, add the peas for another 30 seconds, strain through a sieve & shake the sieve free of water

(the beans are larger, right? -so they take a little longer to cook, though 1 minute is ample)

*add to the morcela in the bowl

*throw over a handful of your chopped herb, squeeze a lemon over the top, a good dash of olive oil & a sprinkling of salt crystals

*toss the salad & serve warm

>a word on blanching:

The idea behind this is to bring out the intensity of colour in whatever is being blanched, in this case peas & broad beans, but the same principle applies to all vegetables. In the process, the edge is also taken off the raw ingredient, meaning that at service time the actual cooking time is reduced to little more than the time it takes to heat through.
30 seconds in boiling water followed by immersion in cold cold water is sufficient to shock the colour out & colour-fast the veg at stage 1. The veg is put aside until stage 2 is ready, then plunged a 2nd time into boiling water for a minute or two, & the result is that your veg hold their colour & keep just enough of their crunch.
Goodbye grey soggy greens & limp pale carrots!
In a restaurant, the chef Entremettier will prepare his veg through the afternoon in preparation for service that evening, bringing it back either by emersion or in a steamer somewhere on the line.

This is a dish best described as being greater than the sum of its parts. The fact is, morcela con favas was one of the great discoveries on my magical culinary journey through Portugal. Since Monte Saraz, I have prepared this dish a number of times in different company, often with friends who were admittedly hesitant when the subject of blood sausage came up. On each occasion, morcela con favas was a triumph.

Of course outside of Portugal, quality Portuguese charcuterie can be hard to come by. In France I cooked this dish using a good local boudin-noir from the Gourdon markets, in the Nederlands bloedworst, in Ireland black pudding; finding the best product locally available. Variations are experimental, & worth trying. For instance, when coriander wasn't on hand I substituted it for mint; on one occasion I used all three herbs, parsley, coriander & mint - the result, delicious! Fresh, crisp, crunchy, soft, rich, aromatic, zesty, warm...at the risk of sounding repetitive, at every sitting, this dish really was a triumph.