For all you tired, you poor winter-weary masses, yearning to breathe fire, I bring you tidings of great joy: you can make your nduja and enjoy it in the same day!

“And-Do-Your-Worst!” means many things.  It’s the Retort Courteous, a riposte to my good friends Scott and Porsha, who have turned up the heat once again in the nduja wars.  (Where would we be without friends to challenge us to try new things, to egg us on, to say “You think that was crazy?  Just watch this!!”)  Over at his Sausage Debauchery blog, Scott posted this past week about his latest batch of nduja, in which a full one-third of the mix consisted of hot chilis.  No slouch, Porsha cut into her nduja, whipped up an nduja burger, and has now unleashed upon an unsuspecting world the nduja chocolate truffle.

“And-Do-Your-Worst!” also tells you how to pronounce my new creation, my secret weapon: nduja-wurst.  Dat’s right, I’m dropping da bomb, unleashing the weapon to make all other weapons obsolete.  While a traditional nduja salame can take days to ferment and then the better part of a year to smoke and slowly dry out, imagine an nduja sausage that is ready to eat the same day you mix it up and that tastes every bit as good or, dare I say it?, even better! 

This is not my first attempt at a meatier and mellower version of nduja.  Back in the spring, I created an nduja pâté, which got rave reviews, and just a couple weeks ago Scott inspired me to make a mortadella with the same Calabrian chilis that go into nduja.  I liked this emulsion-sausage version, which we christened ndujadella, but missed the liver and the garnish of sweet, roasted red peppers that went into the pâté as well as the deep smokiness of the original, slow-cured salame.  Then inspiration struck (or full-blown insanity descended, depending on your point of view): why not make a liverwurst, which traditionally gets hot-smoked, but season it with the Calabrian hot chilis Scott has in his store and garnish it with the sweet peppers? 

Such a chimera might indeed seem like a case of doing my worst, taking a mild, inoffensive sausage like liverwurst and dousing it with hot chilis.  But having been baptized in fire, this liverwurst is reborn as a glorious new creation that outshines its parents.  It has the intense, smoldering heat and smokiness of nduja, with all its rough edges smoothed over by the silky richness of liver, brightened and lightened by the sweet red peppers.

This ain’t your grandfather’s liverwurst, but then he probably didn’t listen to rock ‘n’ roll either!  Spread on one of Stewart’s bagels and bathe in the glow of the Calabrian heat.

Tags: chilis, emulsified sausage, Italian, liver

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 7th, 2010 at 11:27 am and is filed under Club Offerings, Feature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.