Some dishes are for grown-ups. Remember when you were a kid, there were probably a few dishes that seemed then at best tasteless, or even downright disgusting, and you consider the same foods as delicacies today. Blood sausage, named "boudin noir" in France, was one of these untouchable dishes for me in my young age, like oysters and raw beef (steak tartare). For some reason, the texture or something made them seem repulsive. And I am sure that if I had seen then how it's been made, with all this bright blood everywhere, I would have been even more reluctant to make my first try. Blood sausage is a very popular dish in France, where the data for the 2002 consumption (ignoring under-the-radar home productions like this one) is more than 14 700 metric tons. That makes a few kilometers of blood-filled guts.
This charcuterie was even more popular in the past in the french provinces, that is before WW2 and back in the 19th century and earlier : meat products were rare and this was a "poor man's dish" of choice for small farmers who would once or twice a year kill one of the pigs that they raised, and use everything, including the blood and the guts like here.
Gerard works in his own laboratory, a quasi-professionnal preparation room organized like a kitchen that he built behind his house. This is where he prepares the orders for the village's special 
events or for private parties. What amazed me is how simple the recipe is : All you need is parsley, onions, some pork-throat meat, salt, pepper and pig's blood. And of course some kitchen tools, containers and a cauldron. The pork throat is a quite fatty part of the pig (which part isn't ?). The blood is maybe a bit less easy to find, but your butcher will order you some if you ask in advance. Of course, choose carefully the butcher shop or you might end up with a fatwa on your head...
Gerard had bought this 20-kg blood bucket and looking at its content when he opened it was not easy for me. Mixed feelings in front of all this bright blood, like : Is it really the core ingredient of my boudin noir?... Sensitive souls shouldn't look on the picture on the right, I know I should have posted a warning.
On the picture on left, Gerard 
is making the first mix with the pork throat, parsley and onions which have been grinded beforehand. He does that in a large container (without adding the blood yet), with some salt and pepper, and he mixes with his bare hands to get a better feel of the homogeneity and balance between them. He will then cook that first mix a few minutes on a stove, so that the meat gets the aromas of the parsley and onions, tossing the mix with a spatula, the goal being not to have it fully cooked at this stage, but only to interpenetrate the aromas. After tasting the mix as it heats up and adding salt and pepper if necessary, 
he decides that the moment is right for the blood mix : He fills a pan with blood, pours it on the meat and at times mixes the whole stuff with his bare hands, adding more blood until he gets the right fluidity. Of course when he plunges his hands in it, he gets soaked with blood to the forearm, but he is used to it and it is the best way to feel the viscosity and texture of the mix. This mix must at the same time be solid enough (blood sausage is a dish, not a drink), and liquid enough to be poured smoothly into the guts. And he keeps tasting the thing... oh nooo, not the raw blood...Again, this is not for sensitive souls, please look away...
Of course, with the quantity of blood sausage that he has to prepare and cook, Gerard did the whole thing in 4 consecutive batches. First, it is easier to mix, and anyway, the cauldron where the sausage will be cooked wouldn't have held so much sausage at once. The bucket itself contained 20 kg of blood and the label gives additional information like when the animals were slaughtered, when the blood was prepared and the limit date for consumption, the country 
of origin of the pigs (France), a few code- and lot numbers, and the amount of salt (8,37 gr/liter). Gerard says that he paid about 1 Euro per kilogram for the blood. This about-25-liter bucket contains the blood of approximatively 7 or 8 pigs ( about 3 liter/pig). Usually today, pigs are slaughtered at the age of 4 months and with a weight of 95 to 105 kg. He bought also a few kilograms of pork throat and also of onions, but he doses the respective ingredients more intuitively than squarely with a scale. And mixing with his bare hands, he feels when the material reached the right balance and fluidity. Of course he has done tons of blood sausage (and other things that I might show you some day) in his life. His original career was in the freight/trucking sector and this meat preparation was some sort of second passion that opened many doors and gave him a lot of additional work.
The mix is now ready and Gerard selects several guts, cleans them shortly under the tap, letting the water flowing through them like hoses. their length vary from 1 meter to 2 meters maybe. He makes a knot at one end so that when he fills the 
gut with the mix it stays there, and slips the other end on a metal funnel. Looking at the process I remember that someone told me that guts were used as condoms in the past. I don't know if it's true...
The gut, which is a ridiculous white, limp thing when empty, regains its full shape with the filling. The filler must be careful though because a small scratch on the gut could make the sausage burst in the cauldron.
As Gerard and his helper repeatedly fill several guts, the family dog walks in, licking blood stains and fallen debris on the ground. This would jump start a sanitary inspector into action but I think this is a quite efficient cleaning system...
When a gut is properly filled, that is, without any air pocket in the middle (and he gently pushes the filling down for that), Gerard makes another knot to seal the other end tight, and that makes another meter or so of sausage ready to be cooked in the boiling water. He rolls the saussage lengths into crowns (couronnes in french) neatly disposed on the table, the bright red color of the blood gleaming through the thin guts. He will makes 3 or 4 batches of blood saussage, cooking the ones he just made while filling the next, and in a matter of 2 or 3 hours, the whole thing is finished...
All the while, Gerard had prepared a big cast-iron, 53-liter cauldron with a double-lid, filling it with water and switching on the gas heater underneath so that it would boil. He added a few bay leaves in the water. This old boiler cooking pot was made by Rosières, a french company that discontinued these pots but still makes wood cook-stoves (not the most imaginative ones, though as you can check here, for me the best wood cook stoves are Anselmo Cola's or Mealtime Stoves').
Gerard carefully drops the boudin into the pot, where it will cook about 20 to 30 minutes. VERY IMPORTANT : when the sausage has been put in the pot, the water must not boil again, or it would make the fragile guts burst. He regularly moves the boudins with a baton to check them. The sausage turned from bright red to pale brown after being immersed in the hot water.
The cooked blood-sausages are after then disposed in crowns on the table, near the ones that wait their turn. He cuts a few slices. After blowing on my piece to cool it down, I taste it. Very refined, with a velvety texture. It is surprising that low-rated meat products like pork's blood, throat and guts can be so onctuous.
He says that the average cost in raw materials for him (meat, blood, onions and parsley) is barely more than 1 Euro a kilogram. That's amazing and considering the relative simplicity of the recipe, I wonder why people don't make more boudin themselves. Maybe because of the blood... Plus there's no enhancers, preservatives or other food chemical added here. Gerard says that it can be frozen after it cooled down and eaten several weeks later.
The wine...
Of course, even though the "boudin noir" is already cooked, people usually cook it again before serving it, and the barbecue is a great option. Here, we cooked it on a table barbecue with some rosmarin, and we chose a Rhone wine to go with it. The blood sausage being quite fatty, you need a tannic wine and above all with a good acidity for a right balance. I had spotted this Rhone (Ardèche) wine in a store selling all kind of stuff in the region, including a few wines. A few things on the label, like the fact that it was a "Vin de Pays" and at the same time said "Vin non filtré et non collé" (unfiltered and unfined), caught my interest. This Chateau de la Selve, cuvée Palissaire 2003 is a Merlot/Cabernet/Grenache, a nicely spicy wine with a generous full mouth. I foreguessed in the back of my mind when I bought it that it would lack a bit of acidity, as often for the heat-wave-year of 2003, especially that in this estate they probably didn't re-acidify the wines like many others did. But I am still very happy to have discovered this wine and estate and will look forward to their other cuvées and millesimes, especially that it is a very good value (Palissaire costs 6,5 Euro). I also noticed that for this Palissaire they used a long, high-quality cork. This estate vinifies its wines plot by plot without external yeasts with relatively low yields (35-40 hectoliter/hectare).
Yum!
Posted by: Alder Yarrow | May 21, 2007 at 04:49 AM
I grew up eating blood sausage, but my parents never told me what it was. The Polish word, Kashanka, never sounded disgusting. I only found out what blood sausage was when I was in my teens - too many years of enjoying it to be disgusted! Thank you for the pairing tip - not your everyday meal here in Montreal.
Posted by: Joe | May 24, 2007 at 04:27 AM
Have just finished writing my own blog "thecelticcook" where I have talked, briefly, on black pudding and found it interesting to read of your suggestion of wines. Black Pudding is hard to come by here in the Mid West, but not impossible. I have a bottle of a Pic Sait Loup which I may now try with it.
Have just found your blog and I am really enjoying it. Thanks.
Posted by: jacqui muir | September 29, 2008 at 07:52 PM