The Return of the Christmas Blood Sausage!

Cafe Society
1

When I was growing up, after the Christmas morning present-a-plooza :gift: :gift: :gift:, my mom always made us Christmas brunch: bacon and eggs, toast, orange juice, and blood sausage (or black pudding, for the squeamish) (non D&D variant), plus porridge. Mmmmm, good. Black pudding with little white bits. Nice Brit-ethnic brunch.

Then time passed. It became hard to find blood sausage. “Not much call for it anymore”, said our small town butcher. And Maple Leaf meats stopped making it. Finding the blood sausage for Christmas brunch became a quest every year. Occasionally found some variants, greatly inferior to the Maple Leaf version I grew up with.

Until it stopped. No more blood sausage at Christmas. :weary:

Years go by.

Mrs Piper is browsing our local Italian deli web-page, looking for a charcuterie board for Christmas Eve.

“Do you know the Italian deli sells blood-sausage?” she asks.

Whoo-hoo! Blood sausage is advertised. Not a traditional Italian delicacy, so far as I know, but blood sausage!

I go off to the deli the next morning, as soon as it opens. Can’t take a chance on it selling out! Yay - they have blood sausage! Honking big ones, not the little one-family size that Maple Leaf used to make. I order a good sized chunk, and bring it home. Excelsior!

We didn’t do Christmas brunch, but I made it this morning to go with pancakes and bacon. A bit tricky to cook without a non-stick pan, but, THE BLOOD SAUSAGE HAS RETURNED!

A Christmas tradition revived! :christmas_tree: :christmas_tree: :christmas_tree:

:musical_note: :notes: Hark the Herald Angels sing… :notes: :musical_note:

2

Congratulations! That does sound enticing. I’m rather fond of the stuff despite not being of UKish birth or recent descent.

3

Enjoyable! I had some last year in Spain.

4

I believe most European countries have some sort of blood sausage. They even have it at the canteen at work (Switzerland). I have a friend from northern Italy who makes (and eats) tripe, so I could imagine that blood sausage is also available in his area.

Glad you enjoyed it. I really enjoy a big cooked breakfast, but my husband doesn’t, so I only get that when we travel. Something else to look forward to.

5

Yes, it’s all over the place in the world. In Italy it’s sanguinaccio or biroldo. In Poland it’s kiszka. In the German-speaking countries, it’s Blutwurst. In Hungary, it’s kiszka. In France, it’s boudin noir. In Spain (and other Spanish-speaking countries), it’s morcilla. And so on and so forth. I know I’ve seen types of blood sausages in Asian stores, as well. There are many, many cultures that have blood sausage.

6

That said, around here, the only dependable place to get blood sausage is Eastern European groceries. The ones near my house almost always have kiszka or kaszanka, the Polish version of such. I still have it for breakfast with a lot of pepper as a side for soft-yolked fried eggs and a piece of Polish rye from time to time. Mexican morcilla I’ve only been served at a restaurant – haven’t seen it at any of the Mexican shops. There’s also an Irish grocery here that sells both black and white sausages. I’ve seen what I think were blood sausages or variations on such at Asian markets, but those I wasn’t sure about.

7

Dammit, in Hungary it’s véres hurka. Still waking up.

8

I’ve tasted blood sausage in Germany, but i don’t recall either loving or hating it.

There are other ways of cooking with blood. I remember a Polish friend going to some effort to buy duck blood around the holidays to thicken her soup.

Anyway, congrats! It’s always nice to find those forgotten treats. Speaking of which…i have a piece of smoked mackerel in my fridge, that i bought yesterday. I haven’t been able to buy smoked mackerel where i live since the deli of my youth shut down, decades ago. I used to love the stuff. I bought some in Germany last year that was as delicious as i remember. I hope today’s lunch lives up my memory, too.

9

Czarnina or Czernina, duck blood soup.

10

I took a Mediterranean cruise a couple of years ago and the ship had black pudding in the breakfast buffet. I quite liked it and I ate more than my fair share every morning. I haven’t had it before or since, though.

On the other hand, I wasn’t a big fan of Nanjing-style duck blood and vermicelli soup when I had it.

11

The only black pudding I eat is made by Jello.

12

I know morcilla as a Puerto Rican dish and wasn’t aware of the Mexican version. I also don’t recall having encountered it for retail sale.