Martje's Smoked Sausage Stew: A Hunter’s Feast

Baronous Hodge on stews in Frewyn: Stew is the national winter food in Frewyn. For a country that has winter six months of the year, it finds a way to creatively and successfully combine two of its most ubiquitous and beloved foods: soup and meat--potatoes being a close third, if cabbage is not around to defend its honour. That is not to say we do not triumph in a good stew in Marridon, but our winters are more damp than they are niveous, and soups and stews, unless a potage with expensive ingredients, are associated with the poor and therefore hardly make it to the menu of most eateries and cafes, though they steam from every cauldron in the country. Country people understand the value of nutrition over the fits of flavour, and as Frewyn is a whole kingdom of farmfolk who will eat anything given to them after an arduous day in the fields, they know exactly how to be happy: well cured meats, well fired potatoes, and a little posset or mead to soothe the senses. If you ever want to see an entire nation nap at once, you must come to Frewyn during Ailineighdaeth (Ailinade), their annual winter celebration which commemorates the beginning of the new year. There is a national feast of stew, roast, and pies, and then everyone promptly falls asleep over one another until musicians and carolers are prevailed upon to sing everyone awake. It is a momentous thing, proof of the kingdom’s longstanding affection for hearty food made however, eaten however, and adored unanimously. I suppose that comes from being a nation of fertility. Frewyn is the reigning champion of the continents when it comes to husbandry and butchery, not only in the wars they have fought and won, but in the raising and curing of their best livestock. What they do not milk, they kill, and what they do not roast, they boil. Bones are chopped and used for their marrow, and all the organs that are not mashed for pies and bolaig are put into casings and cured. Salt cured meats are often boiled in Frewyn with spices and oats or barley, but smoked meats, though no less exquisite, are reserved for stews. I have seen some butchers eat smoked meats from the hang, but in my opinion, the best way to have smoked Frewyn meat is in a sausage, and particularly as part of smoked sausage stew, a savoury dish with a cavalcade of ingredients served nowhere else in the world in my reckoning. Smoked sausage stew is not the finest meal to run out of the kitchen and onto table, but it certainly is one of the most interesting. It is a particularly personal dish, one that is different from region to region, household to holding. Every cook in the kingdom has a smoked sausage hanging in their larder. I have often wondered whether the custom was not come down from Sesterna, where every matron has a meat hook and a flail besides, but the practice in Frewyn of putting a smoked sausage in stew appears to be original. The stew, when done, is a saline gelatinous sludge, one fraught with rich flavours and rife with the nutrients necessary to survive a bitter winter. The stew is regularly served at the hunting lodge in Glaoustre, its Westren counterpart serving pea and sausage soup instead, and it does enormously well by the hunters. They never complain of it and are always offering the matron of the place their kills to make more. The first time I had the stew was on a farmstead in Sethshire, and I was sat in a great hall with a bundle of farmers, all of whom assured me the swill would “put muscle on my neck” though I did not think my neck looking particularly unpresentable. The cook even offered to show me how it was made and brought me into her kitchen. I had never seen so much garlic in one place. In Marridon, garlic and its allium cousins are used sparingly, because of the effect on the breath, but Frewyn glories in its herbs. The scent of the cloves readily escapes from their pores, and as everybody welters in the same scent, nobody here minds it. I did not think cook was going to use all the garlic, but she quickly proved me wrong. I was more impressed by the size of the smoked sausage, which she sliced with speed as she pushed it from its outrageous casing. After the business have a bit of a boil, I was given an untrimmed taste, and I felt my chastity fall away. It is not quite like a regular meat stew: there are no potatoes to soften the flavour, though there is everything else in the way, but the palative abruptness of earth and fire assails the senses, and you are not so much eating as you are experiencing the stew-- and it is an experience, not one to be had often, but to be appreciated always. My tongue had never distinguished such flavours. I had no idea what was happening to me when the first ladle-full was put down, but I knew it was more wonderful than terrible, if such a thing can be said of a sausage stew.   

   

Martje’s method: Smoked sausage stew’s somethin’ everyone in Frewyn knows how to do, an there’s no other way about it. Don’t matter whether you grew up on the farms or in town, every bowl in the country’s got a stew in it at one time. Making smoked sausage stew’s sure easy, but makin’ a good one another fry o’ fish. The best sausage stews are made with the best meats and the best broths. Alls else in the inbetween don’t mater much. I make my sausage stew base with a thick chicken broth, but you can use whatever type of broth you like, long as it ain’t clear and it’s got the marrow innit. Certain things don’t go in a sausage stew, like potatoes and eggs and such, ‘cause we need ‘em for other things through the long winter, but everythin’ else what you got in yer larder goes in. Now, yer own sausage stew should be a signature o’ yerself, and far be it from me to tell you what you oughtta put in yer pot, but I’m gonna show you how I do it, and you can decide if you wanna put anythin’ else in after we go through the doin’ of it. First, boil yer broth in a large pot. Only fill the pot half way, ‘cause we need for what else. While that’s doin’, fry the onions and garlic, ‘cause it’ll bring the flavour outta ‘em. Once that’s nice and brown, put it in the broth. Then chop carrots, leeks, parsnips, chard, beans, peas, and a little o’ the dark mushroom, if you got one—not too much mushroom, ‘cause we don’t want it to taste too much like it. Whole point is to get the main flavour from the sausage and just have the garden vegetables as fillin’. Put ‘em chopped into the pot, then tend to the spices. Bay leaves go in, however many as yer pot is large, then I do a bit o’ red and black pepper for the warmth, celery powder, and sassafras root for the spice. If you got a Lucentian tomato rollin’ round in the larder what’s about to go green, mash it up and put it in for a bit o’ the colour. While that’s roilin’ round, get yer smoked sausage from the hook. Sea brings ‘em in regular from the shoppe, so we always got a few hangin’ up. Made usually o’ pork and a bit o’ the altogether from lamb or beef, but it’s the smoke flavour that yer wantin’ really. We always made our own from whatever we cut away from the roasts. Everyone in the east’s always got a bit ‘o gut lyin’ round for the casing, but some do a salt rind instead. If you’ve got one with the salt round the outside, be sure not to add any other salt to the stew, otherwise that’s you leakin’ from all sides like a coracle. Westren smoked sausage is done with the mould on it. They make those by keepin’ ‘em down in the bog with the butter. They’re fine for a peas pottage, but best kept outta this stew, ‘cause that rind needs to be cut. Here you’re wantin’ somethin’ with a rind what can be peeled. Take yer sausage like yer strippin’ an eel, cut the ends, and pull the hard casin’ aff like yer peelin’ the skin from a chicken. Should come aff in one go if it’s ripe. Slice yer sausage, put it into the pot, and let the whole thing simmer still must o’ the water boils out and all yer left with is a thick mortar. Dependin’ on yer pot, yer fire, and yer ingredients the cookin’ time’ll be different, but the general rule is: cook till the hard parts o’ the sausage go soft. Keep that one away for yer marriage night. Once the stew’s done, put it in a hollowed trencher to get the best o’ the flavour innit.