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Jewish Sausage, or Chorissa
This is used as an accompaniment to boiled fish and other dishes, and is often met with at Jewish tables. It is purchased of the Jew butchers, and is prepared in the following way: Place the chorissa in warm water, let it heat gently, and then boil for twenty minutes. Serve, surrounded with rice made ready as for curry. Jewish sausages are very good broiled in slices after the previous boiling. They should be quite cold before being put again to the fire. One authority is of opinion that they will be found more digestible, as well as pleasanter to the taste, if they are half-boiled at least before being broiled, toasted, or warmed in the oven for the table.
This is a method for a bought sausage rather than a recipe for making one, and most of its advice still holds. The hinge is the cooling step: the sausage must be cold and firm before it goes under the broiler, or the slices fall apart.
- What chorissa isChorissa is the Anglo-Jewish name for a kosher sausage, usually beef, generally likened to Spanish and Portuguese chorizo; the recipe itself specifies no seasonings. Kosher beef chorizo or a similar spiced beef sausage from a kosher butcher or Middle Eastern grocer is the nearest substitute.
- Fresh versus dry-curedTwenty minutes of gentle boiling suits a raw fresh sausage; a hard dry-cured one needs far less time, if any, and will turn leathery if pushed. Check the label before you time it.
- Heat it gentlyStarting in warm water and bringing it up slowly, as written, keeps the casing from splitting. Once it reaches a bare simmer hold it there rather than at a rolling boil.
- DonenessFresh beef sausage should reach 160F at the centre. Twenty minutes at a simmer will usually do it for a standard link, but a thick sausage may want longer.
- "Rice made ready as for curry"Victorian curry rice meant plain long-grain rice boiled in abundant salted water, drained and dried until the grains fell apart separately. Basmati, rinsed and cooked by any method that leaves it dry and loose, is the modern equivalent.
- Cooling before broilingChill the boiled sausage thoroughly, ideally in the refrigerator, before slicing. Cold fat slices cleanly and the rounds brown rather than crumble under a broiler set high, two to three minutes a side.
- The half-boiling notePar-boiling before broiling renders out some fat and shortens the time over direct heat, which is why the sausage scorches less. It remains a sound technique for any heavily spiced, fatty sausage.
- YieldAllow one sausage of about 4 oz per person with rice as a main dish; sliced and broiled as an accompaniment to fish, half that.