Articles of Mastication

Black Pudding and Champ

How better to flood the system with pure warmth, energy and fortification than an Irish breakfast? What you see above is black pudding and champ.

Black pudding is a simple blood sausage found throughout most of the UK. I made a batch last week from pork blood, steel-cut oats, onions herbs and spices. You make a viscous glop of those elements, stuff it into sausage casings and poach it for about an hour. The sausage is then cooled and dried, and possibly smoked for a while. I haven’t smoked mine, but I may do so with what remains of this batch when I fire up the smokehouse tonight. Once you’ve got a firm sausage, though, all that’s left to do is slice and fry it. You can fry or grill it in links as well, but it’s tastiest when most of your surface area has a crisp caramelization to it. Pork blood contains a lot of fat, so it’s extremely rich eating. Good thing for the oats to soak some of that up…

And the champ? Well, it’s really just boiled potatoes and chopped kale, all mashed together with butter, cream salt, pepper and a pinch of nutmeg.

I’m definitely full of calories now, and ready to tear into the day.