For more than a month now, ¡Shazam!® has been requesting and patiently waiting for some chicken sausages. Here is my first answer to her request and I hope it’s good enough to make her forget about the wait.

I don’t cook nearly enough of it, but I love the bright, fiery flavors of Thai food, where searing red chilis are balanced by the cooling green flavors of cilantro and lime. So when I saw Bruce Aidell had a recipe for a Thai chicken and turkey sausage in his Complete Sausage Book, I knew I had to try it.

For the heat, his version calls for red pepper flakes and cayenne pepper. But I’m growing these beautiful Thai chilis in my garden this summer, so I substituted them instead. Before adding them to the sausage, Big Red and I put microtome slices on our tongue to trial them, and (with 2-3 times the heat of a cayenne pepper) it felt like our tongues had been drilled through by a pinpoint laser hit; an entirely pleasurable laser burn, mind you. Rest assured, we went easy on the chilis in the sausage mix, figuring we could always add more. The amount we used (7-8 of these petit, half-inch chilis), gave the sausage a little background heat, but we decided not to overwhelm the complex flavors and the fresh, clean taste of the herbs.

The only other thing I changed was adding lime–one of my favorite components of Thai food. If I could trust myself to bring a Kaffir Lime tree indoors and keep it going through the winter, I would do it in a midwest minute. So here’s my modified recipe:

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As I type this, Kent (the much-tattooed-tradesman) is installing the last part I need to get my Traulsen fridge running again.

With a week of enforced idleness on my hands, I’ve been going a little stir crazy, planning ever more varieties of sausages to make.  In addition to that, special requests have been piling up for the summer-sausage-grilling season.  So this month I’m going hog wild and making at least four different varieties of fresh sausage.

For the Lar-B-Q I tried to make some “thai smoked chicken.”  Tasty as the chickens were, I was a little disappointed  that they didn’t pick up much chili, cilantro, or lime flavors from the brine I made.  Meantime, ¡Shazam!® has been after me to make some chicken sausages for summer grilling.  So the first thing I’ll make are some chicken and turkey sausages, bursting with the flavors of fresh herbs and spices–cilantro, basil, mint, lemongrass, garlic, ginger, and lime zest–given depth with a little Thai fish sauce and green curry paste and then set alight with these tiny Thai chilis, which are twice as hot as cayenne.  Grab a Singha or the fire extinguisher of your choice!   When I work out the recipe, I’ll be sure and share it.

To make these sausages I picked up some ground turkey from the Amish-run poultry processing plant down by Arthur.  I have enough to make two kinds of sausage, so I’m also going to try an Italian-style turkey sausage out of Bruce Aidell’s Complete Sausage Book.  In addition to the traditional garlic, fennel, and red pepper flakes, his recipe calls for sun-dried tomatoes and white wine.

Last week, I also heard from the Giojas at the Joy of Illinois Farm that they had a yearling ewe they were sending to slaughter this week.  (It only produced one ram this spring, and that’s not enough to earn it’s keep on the farm.)  Since the No-Blog-Dog has been threatening me with serious bodily harm (or at least the revocation of my pool privileges) unless I make the lamb Loukanika again, I told the slaughterhouse to grind up all the lamb except for the racks.  With its generous seasonings of thyme, oregano, coriander, garlic, and orange zest, this sausage is also one of my favorites, so keep an eye out for it before the two of us snap it all up.  They will go perfectly with this year’s vintage of vin d’orange!

Finally, my sausagemaking apprentice Michaela (“You’re hired!”) has been hankering for some merguez.  This is another lamb sausage, from north Africa, seasoned with cumin and coriander, and maybe a little fennel and allspice, but definitely heated up with a good dose of harissa, their fiery red pepper paste.

Last time I smoked some whole chickens, those TLP members lucky enough to get one asked me–puh-leeze!–to offer it again.  Well, the Joy of Illinois Farm, located just west of Champaign, had its first processing day of the year this past Saturday, and I now have four smoked birds to offer up to the insatiable hordes.

Like the last batch, these were brined overnight to give the meat a nice, herbal flavor and to make sure it stays moist during all the hours in the smoker.  But while the last batch I did in the fall was basted with a deep, dark maple-bourbon sauce, I wanted to try something lighter and more summery this time around, so these chickens were basted with a glaze of honey and lemon juice, and, when they came out of the smoker 6 hours later, all golden and sticky, they were liberally dusted with freshly-made lemon pepper.  I tried a little bit for lunch today, and I have a new favorite.

As always, these chickens have been raised on natural pasture, in large pens where they are free to run around, so their meat is naturally very lean and flavorful.  (Spoiler alert: one bite of how good a real chicken can taste will make it difficult if not impossible to ever go back to that dry, tasteless pap sold in supermarkets.)  Slow and low cooking in the smoker makes the meat perfectly tender, while brining keeps it moist.  Salty, succulent, a little smoky, some sweetness from the honey, counterpointed or balanced by the pungent mixture of lemon zest and black pepper–this is perfect food for the hot, muggy days that are now upon us.  Serve with some homemade lemonade, a shandy, or a bright New Zealand sauvignon blanc, and you’ll be refreshed in body and spirit.

These are broilers from the Joy of Illinois farm, where they are raised in large pens on natural grass. I brine them for 24 hours to introduce a little salt and cure and to make sure they stay moist while slow cooking. Then they’re smoked over cherry wood, basting them with the same bourbon glaze I used on the bacon.

These have so much rich chicken flavor that they hold their own with the smoke, pepper, and sweet bourbon glaze. Perfect for a picnic (hard to imagine weather warm enough now, but wait a few days), they could also be sliced up to make a chicken sandwich or served with a green salad. Great for chicken enchiladas or tacos. If you like the deep flavors of barbecue, but are looking for something lean, this is it. Try with a mexican beer and a wedge of lime, a smoky German rauchbier, or a crisp fumé blanc.

In launching the Morsel of the Month Club, I hope to put the word “tidbit” back on every tongue. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a tidbit is “a small and delicate or appetizing piece of food; a toothsome morsel, delicacy, bonne bouche.” And I love this early quotation they give, from the Connoisseur in 1774: “For fear any tid-bit should be snapped up before him, he snatches at it, greedily.”

Here’s how the Morsel of the Month Club works. You pay for a six-month or twelve-month membership, and each month you get two items: one pound of whichever product I’m most pleased with that month plus a tidbit made exclusively for MoM members. These toothsome morsels are small production items, something just too ridiculously elaborate, time-consuming, and/or expensive to make a regular offering, but which I can’t resist trying my hand at. MoM membership is perfect for any little piggy on your gift list, including yourself!

November’s tidbit: Chicken Galantine
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