Goan sausage masala

[helenas]

I found the following in 2-years old UK Wine Telegraph article: "Even Indian chefs are introducing chorizo. During his 'Salaam Bombay' festival, Mehernosh Mody of La Portes Des Indes served a Goan sausage masala, which featured chorizo, slow-cooked for three hours until meltingly soft with a rich spiced tomato and onion sauce."

How would you approach cooking this dish?

Thank you.

[bague25]

Here is a recipe using the goa sausages:

1 packet goa sausages

4 BIG onions chopped

2 garlic cloves chopped fine

1 inch ginger chopped fine

4 Big potatoes cut in 1 inch cubes

A chilli and some bafat masala if you want it really hot (I don't use these two)

Snip a corner of the packet and let the fat run into a bowl. Use this fat to saute half the onions till transluscent. Add garlic & ginger cook for a couple of more minutes. Add chopped sausage and potatoes (with chilli and masala, if used). Cook for about 20 mins till potatoes are cooked. Serve steaming hot garnished with onions and some pau (if you can find some!)

If this dish is very fatty - add some potatoes of absorb the fats or you could drain it off but what a waste! The last time I cooked this was when I was in India (a year ago) for my borther, and boy, did he have a gratified look on his face

I'll investigate to see if I have a recipe of how to make these chorizos over the weekend, if you're interested

[Vikram]

Goan sausage is one of the easiest to cook dishes because it doesn't need any seasonings or even fat to fry it in - it all comes included. I keep them as stand-bys - if you buy good quality ones, they store well and don't need refrigeration - for times when someone drops by unexpectedly.

All you need to do then is cut open a sausage from its packet (they are so oily they are uusally sold sealed in plastic) and then the sausage meat from its casing. Put it in a pressure cooker with tomatoes, potatoes and onions, all whole or halved at most.

Then pressure cook for half an hour and that's it - the fat of the sausages and the juices in the tomatoes and onions will have combined to form a thin gravy full of that unmistakable Goa sausage flavour.

Apart from being easy, the advantage of this method is that its supposed to kill parasites that might well be in the meat, the eating habits of Goan pigs being something one does NOT want to get into closely.

On the other hand, it could be argued that if you were bothered about your health at all, you wouldn't be eating Goa sauages in any form. From the health point of view they are pretty deadly - greasy with animal fats, ultra spicy, sour and packed with salt. Yet their taste is so incredible - its like a rich, tempered sourness, a taste sensation really rare in Indian food.

So perhaps one could damn one's health and try other ways to cook it. And I will admit that the results from my pressure cooking are never as good as the sausage chilly fry at Martin's in Colaba, which I love so much that Martin's is the one restaurant I never need to order in, the waiter just brings me sausages and pau without asking. And if its over and he sees me coming, he'll come out to prewarn me. Unfortunately they do't share their recipes.

My only crib with Goa sausages is that their flavour is so individual and intense that its hard to use them as an ingredient. Has anyone experimented with using Goa sausages in other dishes?

Vikram

[helenas]

My only crib with Goa sausages is that their flavour is so individual and intense that its hard to use them as an ingredient. Has anyone experimented with using Goa sausages in other dishes?

Since as mentioned in the initial post, i'm planning to use chorizo sausages that are spiced with spanish paprika and garlic only, what would be the right spice mix to use for this let's say Chorizo Masala?

[Vikram]

I don't know about spice mixture, it seems to me that Goa sausages use mainly a fairly hot chilli powder and lots of vinegar (a fairly robust vinegar, in Goa it would be toddy vinegar, but any strong and not too chemical tasting one should do). Between the chilli powder and vinegar, most other tastes are pretty much blown away,

Vikram

[wesza]

The information that I was able to check out advised me that the Goan Sausages are based on a "Hot Portugese Linguica Sausage" that is very different then Chorizo Sausage in taste and texture.

The Portugese Sausages are available on the East and West Coasts even at such stores as Sam's Clubs or Costco. The best are available in Newark NJ, San Jose Ca. and around Boston or Cape Cod.

Irwin

[helenas]

quick update: i used Pork Vindaloo recipe from the latest Jaffrey's Curry book.

Halved D'artagnan chorizo, a lot of thinly sliced onions, whole dried small chillies, and into the low oven for two hours. Perfectly plumped sausages, thick sauce from onions almost completely melted down, and amazing aroma - indian spices matched nicely with the spanish smoked paprika.