Sausage-making at home

Love great sausage? Then this week's story, "The case for homemade sausage," might just leave you rolling up your sleeves, ready to try your hand at making your own.

Of course, for the first-timer, the act of sausage making can seem a bit confusing -- if not downright daunting. So we've included a step-by-step photo gallery illustrating the process from start to finish. 

It may take a little time to get the feel for the whole process, but sausage-making can be a fun -- and tasty -- activity. Bruce Aidells and Denis Kelly in their book "Bruce Aidells' Complete Sausage Book" recommend inviting friends over to help out: "Sausage-making has always been a communal activity, and making sausages together, frying up samples, and tasting, can double the fun and halve the work."

Have fun, and happy sausage-making!

 -- Noelle Carter

Photo by Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times

Bye bye, delivery guy -- we've turned our kitchen into a pizza parlor

We turned today's Food section over to one of our favorite foods: pizza. We've got everything you ever wanted to know, or needed to know, about pizza.

Seriously.

You probably think you cannot make good pizza at home because you lack a pizza oven. Well, think again. Times test kitchen manager Noelle Carter shows you how to line your oven with fireproof bricks*** so you can achieve that trademark crispy crust. (You can also watch her do it in the video.) All good pizzas start with homemade dough, so we've got a recipe for that as well as recipes for pizza Margherita (and a no-cook sauce) and potato pizza. We've also got a look at variations on that theme.

But let's say you're not the cook-at-home type, or you want your pizza, and you want it RIGHT NOW. Times restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila takes you on a tour of the best gourmet pizza spots in town and here's a list you'll definitely want to bookmark, as well as a locator map. (And by the way, did you ever wonder how we got from regular old-fashioned pizza to gourmet pizza? Check out this cool pizza chronology flash graphic.)

What's that? You say that you can't get good pizza west of Manhattan? Then check this out. And then check out this list of places were you can buy it by the slice.

Finally, here's a photo gallery look at testing out pizzas in The Times' test kitchen, from start to finish, and here's a recommended wine to wash down that slice of 'za.

(***Note that we said fireproof bricks. If you use the regular ol' bricks you've got piled up in the yard, they could explode. And that's not a good pizza topping.)

-- Rene Lynch

Do you have this in your kitchen?

Kitchen twine is a kitchen staple -- do you have yours?. Here's everything you need to know -- along with a step-by-step guide to that quintessential function, the butcher's slip knot. With that under your belt, you're just a ball of twine away from making: bacon-wrapped pork loin with roasted apples, boeuf a la ficelle and chicken roulade with red chard, pepitas and chiles over hominy.

-- Rene Lynch

Happy Mardi Gras! Got king cake?

It's Mardi Gras -- got your king cake?

It may not be so common on the West Coast, but the king cake is very popular in the southern U.S. (generally eastern Texas to Florida) where Mardi Gras is celebrated. It's typically a brioche-like coffee cake in the shape of an oval ring, and sometimes containing a filling or two. The cake is frosted and decorated with colored sugars (purple, representing justice; green, representing faith; and gold, representing power). Hidden inside one may find a plastic baby or a bean, making that person "king" or "queen" for a day (and also making him or her responsible for providing the next king cake at a king cake party).

Largely drawn from Catholic tradition, the king cake spans a number of cultures and comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. From the classic French gâteau de rois to Mexico's la rosca de reyes, it commonly marks the celebration of Epiphany, or the arrival of the three kings in Bethlehem on the 12th day of Christmas.

I had my first king cake several years ago. I was training at a restaurant in New Orleans after completing my culinary studies and happened to be in town for the Carnival season (Carnival starts on Epiphany, or Jan. 6, and ends with Mardi Gras, the last day before the start of Lent). The energy was simply amazing, the whole city swept up in a celebration that just continued to build as Mardi Gras drew near. And while I loved the parades around town and the revelry in the French Quarter, it's probably the king cake parties with local friends that I remember most fondly.

Since then, I try to get back to New Orleans whenever I can to celebrate Mardi Gras. When I can't (more often than not), I love to celebrate locally with friends. I'll make a king cake or two, and we'll throw a small party.

I've included a recipe for my king cake. While they're easy to find online, shipped king cakes can be dry and lacking in flavor. This homemade version may involve a little work, but the results are worth it. And outside of Carnival season, the recipe makes a great coffee cake any time of the year.

Happy Mardi Gras!

How to make duck confit

Over at the blog Kate Hill: A French Kitchen Adventure, one of my favorites in the food world, Hill has just posted Part 2 of her tutorial on making duck confit.

She’s been living on the Julia Hoyt, a 75-year-old Dutch canal boat moored along the Canal de Garonne near Agen in southwestern France, since 1987. She also teaches cooking workshops in an 18th century stone farmhouse with a kitchen garden just in front of her boat’s mooring. If you tend to frequent international newsstands, look for the latest issue of Maisons Sud Ouest, which features a 12-page spread on the boat and farmhouse. You can also see the photos in a slide show at www.relaisdecamont.com.

The American expatriate has also written a couple of books, including “A Culinary Journey in Gascony: Recipes and Stories From My French Canal Boat.”

In this tutorial, she starts from the very beginning, shopping at the market in Agen. You’ll follow along step by step as she salts and preserves the duck the way cooks have been doing it in this part of France for hundreds of years.

Everything is used: Nothing is wasted.

Notes from the test kitchen: Inaugural poundcake

Every once in a while, The Times' test kitchen receives a recipe that needs just a little extra attention before we feel fit to publish it. The deflated cake at left is one of the more obvious examples.

We test, on average, more than 600 recipes a year. Roughly 400 of these make it to print. Recipes are tested and adapted for the home kitchen from a variety of sources: chefs, restaurants, food writers, even newly published cookbooks. (It's amazing how many cookbooks come out with untested recipes). Of course, we also develop recipes from scratch.

The picture above is from the original test for William Henry Harrison's 1841 poundcake, a published recipe from the time and one of several submitted by Andrew Smith for this week's cover story, "The first suppers: A tradition of inaugural meals." The vintage recipe fascinated us; looking nothing like the poundcakes we know today, this promised to be full of flavor with more than  one-fourth cup of spice and one cup each of brandy, white wine and rosewater.

The ingredient ratios looked a bit off, and the method was suspect (the instructions came with this caveat: "If any part is burnt, scrape it off as soon as cold."). Intrigued -- and challenged -- we were determined to make it work.

Bacon and doughnuts and cheeseburgers -- oh, my!

Orlando was busy over the holidays dreaming up enlightened uses for bacon.  One of his creations was truly inspired.  Check it out.

This, my friends, is a bacon-doughnut-cheeseburger.

Yup! A cheeseburger topped with crisp slices of bacon, sandwiched between a sliced Krispy Kreme doughnut. It's not the first time I've seen the bacon/doughnut pairing; bacon doughnuts are specialties at places including Nickel Diner in downtown Los Angeles, Dynamo Donut & Coffee in San Francisco and Voodoo Donuts up in Portland, Ore. But it is the first time I've seen the combination with a cheeseburger. (I especially like the composition of the burger: the glazed outer halves of the doughnut face inward toward the burger, keeping the fingers clean while the creation is shamelessly devoured. Very, very thoughtful.)

Well done, Orlando!  You've earned number No. 19 on my list of "1,001 things to do with bacon."

-- Noelle Carter

Check below for the rest of the list:

For those quiet moments... bacon bath salts

Long day?

Stressed?  Tired?

Need to relax?

How about a warm, quiet, bacon-scented bath....

Escape to bacon-land with No. 18 on my list of "1,001 things to do with bacon," courtesy of Jill Harness. The salts are easy to make, following Jill's step by step guide, requiring just a little Epsom salts, borax, liquid smoke and salt pork or bacon (salt pork renders more fat than bacon).

Of course, Jill also sells the salts pre-made (this may be safer for those of us who might eat the pork before the recipe's finished -- don't laugh, you know who you are).

Relax, then take a look at where the rest of the list stands:

Step-by-step: Making panforte with candied quince

A sliver of panforte makes for an impressive end to the meal -- or an elegant holiday gift. Here's your step-by-step guide to making it.

This recipe for panforte with candied quince was one of the stars of our two-part holiday baking package. Part 1 was all about cooking with spices, and included gingerbread and springerle cookies, and more.

Check back here on Tuesday for an early look at Part 2.

Want a hint? There will be chocolate.

--Rene Lynch

Photo credits: Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times