Philadelphia Hoagies & Seafood

Italian Hoagie from Pastificio Deli in South Philly

I love seafood.  Love it.  I'm coming up on 15 years of writing this blog, and I hope my passion for seafood and oysters has been aptly communicated in that time.  However, my absolute favorite meal is an Italian hoagie.  You may know it as a sub, a grinder, a wedge, just an Italian, or any number of other names.  Y'all are my heroes, but to me, it's a hoagie.  It's the thing I missed the most while living in San Francisco.  Since returning to Philadelphia, I've been making up for lost time, eating some of the best sandwiches in America.  Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of great sandwiches in the Bay Area and all over the country.  Pastrami on rye in New York, Cubanos in Miami, Po' boys in New Orleans, Italian Beefs in Chicago.  I still believe the fish sandwich is due its proper time in the national spotlight.  However, no place does sandwiches quite like the City of Brotherly Love.  I'll admit I'm biased towards many of the region's culinary creations.  But maybe there's a reason Philadelphia is consistently named the best sandwich city in the States.  And maybe there's a reason the hoagie, not the cheesesteak, is the Official Sandwich of Philadelphia.  And maybe, just maybe, that's because the Philadelphia Italian hoagie is the best sandwich in the country.  Yep, shots fired.  Come at me.

With such a bold claim, it's only appropriate for a little more detail.  Surely you've come across the classic Americanized Italian sandwich in one form or another.  Deli meats like ham, prosciutto, capicola, and salami piled on bread, most often a torpedo or sub roll, paired with cheese, lettuce, tomato, and onion.  It's typically dressed with some sort of condiment.  Oil and vinegar, pepper relish, Italian dressing, and for the blasphemers, mustard or mayo.  They're made all over the world.  Subway is the largest fast food chain on the planet with over 37,000 stores in 100 countries, serving its Spicy Italian or Italian BMT in most locations.  Unfortunately, Subway's v-cut quality days of the '90s are long gone, and now it's so shit even Steph Curry couldn't save it.  But respect for spreading sub familiarity far and wide.

Subway's "Hotshot Italiano"
Not sure if it is, but sounds kind of racist

Identifying the point of origin for the Italian-American sandwich is a fool's errand.  Countless regions across every state in the Northeast have their claimants, and they're possibly all right.  Placing meat on bread with fixins isn't exactly rocket surgery.  It's likely a few of them did this autonomously with some Old World culinary reference.  Philadelphia and the surrounding counties have their own competing candidates in DiCoztanza's, Emil's, and others.  What's largely agreed upon is that industrialization and urbanization of the late 19th and early 20th century shifted the way people in the US ate.  For decades prior, the US workforce was primarily agrarian.  Farmers grew a lot of their own food and could pause for meals throughout the day.  However, as the workforce shifted to manufacturing, laborers needed to purchase their food and often entire meals.  At the same time, Italian immigrants began opening Italian grocers in cities all across the Eastern Seaboard.  These markets sold bread, cheese, and antipasto.  With these naturally paired items on hand and busy laborers demanding economical meals on the go, it's no wonder the Italian sandwich gradually, perhaps even independently, rose to prominence in nearly every city in the Eastern US. 

A History of Philadelphia Sandwiches

Beyond being the best, the only real difference between the Philadelphia hoagie and other regional iterations is titular.  There are slight ingredient and execution differences between the sub, zep, spuckie, grinder, hero, etc., even hoagie to hoagie.  However, none are more notable than the name variations themselves.  While the etymology of "submarine sandwich," as it's most commonly known nationally, is relatively straightforward (emphasis on the relatively), the origins of the term "hoagie" are a bit more hazy.  No single resource I've found breaks this down better than Mike Madaio's A History of Philadelphia Sandwiches.  The majority of the following came directly from his chapter on hoagies, and I highly recommend purchasing the book to read in its entirety.    

There are a number of theories around the hoagie, many of which don't hold much weight when scrutinized.  However, two things seem certain.  One, the word is not as old as we'd like to believe.  It doesn't appear in text until 1946, and even then it's sporadic until the '50s.  Two, it's derived from the word "hoggie," "hoggy," or "hogie," as written references to the sandwich with these names began in 1940.  These simple points actually rule out a number of mainstream theories.

Philadelphia Hoagie Guide by Hawk Krall

1. It's named after the famous musician and actor Hoagy Carmichael.  The homophonic relationship is undeniable.  However, Carmichael's celebrity wasn't truly at its peak until the late '40s and early '50s, making the connection unlikely.  More evidential, we know hoagie stems from hoggie, and Hoagy's got nothing to do with hoggies.  
   
   
2. It comes from early 20th century street vendors called hokey pokey men.  At the start of the 20th century, street vendors known as hokey pokey men were regular fixtures in Western cities including London, Liverpool, New York and, of course, Philadelphia.  Some claim these vendors sold Italian sandwiches, which became knowns as hokeys and eventually hoagies.  However, records show hokey pokey men were almost exclusively known for selling ice cream, no more, no less.  And again, hoagie came from hoggie, making the connection even less plausible.    
   
   
3. It stems from a phrase meaning poverty-stricken - "one the hoke."  Philadelphia grocers, particularly during the Great Depression, would hand out leftover bread, meat scraps, and veggies to locals down on their luck.  Being in dire financial straits was colloquially known as being "on the hoke."  The resulting sandwich became known as a hokie and eventually a hoagie.  I like this one, especially due to its impetus from kindness and parallels to the po'boy.  However, yet again, there is no written record of the sandwich being called a hokie, and "on the hoke" certainly didn't lead to hoggie.
   
   
4. It's named after shipyard laborers or their meals at Hog Island.  Probably the most popular theory.  In 1917, the U.S. Government contracted a shipyard at Hog Island (the modern PHI airport) as part of the WWI effort.  It was the largest shipyard in the world at the time, employing thousands.  Either the laborers themselves or the sandwiches they ate became known as hoggies, eventually leading to hoagies.  Finally, a theory with hoggie to hoagie.  However, the Hog Island shipyard was shuttered in 1921, and we don't see hoggie in writing until 1940.  It's possible it stemmed from here, but unlikely given the time gap.  That would be like us not having written record of McGriddles until 2023.  

Unfortunately, the most plausible story is far from the most enchanting.  In the late '20s, jazz musician Al De Palma saw people eating large Italian sandwiches around Philadelphia.  Stunned by the size and heft of the sandwiches, he thought "man, you'd need to be a hog to eat one of those."  A decade later in the midst of the Great Depression and unable to find work as a musician, De Palma opened a sandwich shop.  Italian sandwiches were already common place by then.  The rise of the supermarket forced many local grocers to shift, and sandwich making was an accessible, low-cost startup.  We still see the legacy of this shift today with the ubiquity of corner hoagie shops all over the region.  De Palma of course sold Italian sandwiches; however, he decided to label his as hoggies.  Within a few years, his sandwiches were the talk of the town.  Hoggie worked its way into the Philadelphia lexicon, becoming the standard designation for Italian sandwiches, and De Palma became the self-proclaimed King of Hoggies.  And if you're at all familiar with the Philadelphia accent, it's no shock that the hoggie quickly became the hoagie we enjoy today. 

 

Al De Palma and his hoggie assembly line - Philadelphia Inquirer

So, why is the once-hoggie-now-hoagie better than any other regional Italian sandwich?  There's no secret sauce, ingredient, or technique to a Philadelphia hoagie.  The components are much the same as any other.  In reality, it's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Upon moving here a few decades ago, now-celebrated Philadelphia food critic Craig LaBan lamented that there was no great pizza.  He soon realized it wasn't from a lack of talent or resources, but rather that everyone was focused on making great sandwiches.  Philadelphians are fanatics about their sandwiches, and local purveyors respond in kind with the best ingredients, craft, and understanding of tradition.  With such a foundation, it's not hard to produce the best sandwich in the country.

Niland's Seafood Muffuletta

Hoagie history and veneration is fun, but making an Italian hoagie with seafood was the true goal of this post.  "Seafood hoagies" exist, such as the Little Fish's floagie or Honeysuckle Provisions' Friday fish hoagie.  Po'boys are arguably seafood hoagies.  But I wanted to go full ham, literally, using all seafood charcuterie.  Cured or preserved fish served in sandwich format is nothing new.  Lox, pickled herring, smoked trout, whitefish salad, and canned tuna are longstanding sandwich staples.  Nobody would classify those as deli meats, though.  Japanese items like surimi and kamoboko come closer in style and texture, but are rarely seen utilized in sandwich format.  However, over the last few years, the preserved seafood landscape has dipped into classic sliced meats.  Swordfish bacon, salmon pastrami, lobster lunch meat.  Josh Niland, notable Australian chef of "#FishAsMeat" fame, even makes a muffuletta consisting of albacore tuna 'nduja, ocean trout salami, and kingfish mortadella.  Dude's already a legend in my mind, but this struck a new chord.  With plenty of fishpiration, I set off on my seafood hoagie adventure.  Wooooo!  Gonna make some aquatic cold cuts!

A point of contention in the Philadelphia area is exactly what meats make up the proper Italian hoagie.  There's a wide array of Italian and Italian-American cold cuts, all of which have likely made their way onto a hoagie at some point.  The one thing that seems to be loosely agreed upon is that an Italian hoagie requires three different meats.  Within those meats, I believe the best results are achieved with a complimentary diversity.  There is some crossover and interchangeability here, but a good guide is:

• A classic cooked and / or cured meat like Italian ham, capicola / coppa / gabagool, or prosciutto cotto.  This comprises the bulk of the sandwich, adding heft and meatiness.  It should be in a 2 to 1 to 1 ratio with the other cuts.
• A fermented and / or supplemental cured meat, such as genoa salami, pepperoni, soppressata, speck, or prosciutto di parma.  This contributes tooth and texture, as well as additional flavor in tang and spice.
• An emulsified or fatty meat, like mortadella, bologna, cotechino, even 'nduja or lardo.  This brings a richness and body to the sandwich, as well as an extra layer of savory depth.   

Great.  I understood the assignment.  Time to make the oceanic equivalents.

 
Spicy Tuna Ham

Tuna Loin ready for Smoker (L) 
Brine Mixture (R) 

I like spicy, and love a hoagie with hot capicola or peppered ham. I wanted the base of my seafood hoagie to bring the heft and heat, so I decided on brined, heavily spiced, cold smoked tuna.  Hot smoking a fish cooks it, giving it that flaky texture like smoked salmon or trout dips.  Cold smoking a fish, however, preserves it while maintaining the raw texture, like lox or gravlax.  A spicy, Niland style cold smoked tuna loin would be quite similar in taste and texture to an Italian ham.  I started by brining a two pound yellowfin tuna loin in a concentrated mix of kosher salt, brown sugar, red pepper flakes, coriander, paprika, black peppercorns and pink salt #1.  After twelve hours, I removed the loin, rinsed, patted dry, and covered it in more red pepper, black pepper, and paprika.  Lastly, I tied it off and placed it back in the fridge for twelve hours of drying and pellicle development.

We've got a decent amount of culinary oddities in our household, or unitaskers as they're commonly known.  Pasta machine, sausage grinder, vacuum sealer, food dehydrator, seltzer carbonator, even a deli slicer, as you'll see shortly.  However, we have yet to buy a smoker.  Since I couldn't justify the $500+ price tag for this project, plus the $130+ cold smoker adapter, I ended up MacGyvering one.  Repurposing two cardboard boxes, a wooden dowel, a hot plate, a handheld mini fan, and some flexible duct piping, I made my very own, fully functional cold smoker.  I'm far from cheap, but all in, this maybe cost me $30.  Not bad compared to the price of a commercial smoker.  Funnily enough, I also think it's the only time I've ever used duct tape on actual duct work.
   

Homemade Cold Smoker

I smoked the tuna loin for a little over four hours with a mixture of smoke chip samples on hand that I'd been wanting to use for ages.  Cherry, oak, apple, and hickory.  It needed pretty minimal maintenance, only refreshing the wood chips every hour or so.  Once finished, I set it aside to wait patiently for its cold cut partners.  The family wasn't too thrilled with the smokey scented fridge it created, but hoagie greatness requires sacrifice, right?

Octopus Salami

I get it.  We all know they're smart, especially if you've seen My Octopus Teacher.  I hope someone is reading this and condemning my use of octopus.  And while sitting on this perceived moral high ground, maybe they're sipping a Starbucks frappuccino made from child labor coffee beans.  Perhaps they're enjoying some avocado toast that's literally decimating entire water supplies in Chile.  Even better, they're reading this on an iPhone.  Many of our personal choices can have regrettable implications around the world, often without our realizing.

When it comes to food, I don't value one life more than the other based our contemporary understanding of what constitutes intelligence.  Recent research has shown trees and fungi communicate with each other.  All life is precious and deserving of our respect, regardless of how cute or smart we think it is.  At the same time, some life must end to nourish others.  For me, the importance is in the sustainable production and humane treatment of our food.  This goes from peas to pork and everything in between (the latter is also supposedly quite clever).  As long as the octopus was responsibly and ethically harvested, it's kosher in my book.   And it's ok if we disagree.  Don't eat my octopus salami, enjoy your iPhone, and we can still be friends. 

Beginnings of Octopus Salami

I didn't have the time or equipment to make actual cured and fermented octopus salami.  However, cooked octopus texture on its own would provide a nice contrasting bite, similar to a salami, and I knew I could achieve the salami flavor with the same seasonings.  A classic octopus carpaccio technique would work great.  I poached a whole Atlantic octopus in red wine, garlic, onions, paprika, peppercorns and fennel seeds for two hours.  Once fully cooked, I pulled the octopus to chill and broke it down.  The goal was to compress the octopus together in a ham press, forming a sliceable roll.  I also reduced the poaching liquid to a cup, allowed it to cool, and mixed in some gelatin.  Adding the concentrated stock to the salami would add flavor, and the gelatin would aid in keeping it all together.  I layered it all into the press, adding plenty of fennel seeds and black peppercorns intermittently to replicate that Genoa style.  Finally, into the fridge it went to set overnight. 

Steelhead Mortadella    

Steelhead Mortadella Ingredients

Last up was the rich and fatty component.  Habitual James Beard nominee Beau Schooler out of Juneau makes some pretty cool shit with local, seasonal salmon.  Salmon wings, shiny smoked salmon, salmon pepperoni, kelp cured salmon roe, compressed melon lox. Given the abundance of Alaskan seafood he uses with a focus on Italian technique, I figured he might provide some inspiration.  Sure enough, his salmon and scallop mortadella was the perfect fit for my hoagie.

Unfortunately, it was the middle of winter, when no Pacific wild-caught salmon is available fresh.  I could have gone for frozen sockeye, but I needed something a little fattier.  I'm also not a fan of most Atlantic farmed salmon, for a variety of reasons.  Then I remembered one of my previous winter projects where I used a locally farmed steelhead trout for a Fish Wellington.  It had a decent amount of fat and would work great for my mortadella.  Mixing in a few sea scallops would add to the richness as well.

Any mortadella starts with emulsifying meat, almost into a paste, with seasonings and binders.  While certainly not the most appetizing to prepare, many commonplace foods we love are emulsified meats.  Hot dogs, gyros, pepperoni, scrapple and pork roll for my Mid-Atlantic homies, and even chicken nuggets.  Contrary to the idiom, the world would be a better place if we all understood how the proverbial sausage was made.  Just think of that iPhone.  Anyway, I thoroughly blended the steelhead and a few sea scallops with salt, sugar, black pepper, coriander, garlic powder and egg whites.  Once a smooth forcemeat texture, I piped it all into a cook bag for steaming.  I also layered in whole pistachios and a few whole sea scallops to replicate that classic mortadella with fatback.  All bagged up, into the ham press and simmering water it went to steam to an internal temperature of 135°.  After about thirty minutes, it was fully cooked and ready for the fridge to chill and set. 

The SF Oyster Nerd Seafood Hoagie

The next day all three nautical deli meats were ready to go. They came out exactly as I'd hoped, especially when shaved on the deli slicer.  The tuna ham was smokey, spicy, and a perfect meaty cold cut texture.  The octopus salami was toothsome, savory, and had sharp, fragrant notes of fennel seed and black peppercorn, just like Genoa salami.  And the steelhead mortadella was rich, unctuous, and garlic forward with a slight scallopy sweetness.  Time for hoagie assembly.    

A great hoagie starts with great bread.  Which bread is best is another local point of contention, but "it's all about the bread" is commonly heard when talking about Philadelphia sandwiches.  Madaio's book has an entire chapter dedicated to just bread.  For my sandwich, I'd wanted to get a famous Sarcone's Bakery hoagie roll, but the 2 hour round trip for a loaf was a tough sell to the wife.  Liscio's Bakery seeded pan blind loaf has become a regional standard, with award winning Primo Hoagies even using them.  They're readily available at several retail stores in the area, and I prefer sesame seeded hoagie rolls.  They add pleasant toasted nuttiness. 

Seafood Hoagie Assembly

In terms of fixins and condiments, the world is your hoagie, except for mustard and mayo.  I believe you'd get your ass kicked asking for that.  The usual suspects are lettuce, tomato, and onion.  The lettuce is always finely shredded, and has affectionately become known as "shredduce" by some.  Careful, though.  Say shredduce in some parts of Philly and you'd get your ass kicked again.  The tomato should be sliced translucently thin and lightly salted to extract some moisture and flavor.  The onions must be sliced paper thin as well, and should be briefly marinated in oil, vinegar, and Italian seasoning.  This removes some of the piquant raw onion flavor that can overwhelm a hoagie.  Some form of pickled or roasted pepper often turns the topping trio into a quartet.  I always go for pepperoncinis as they've got a slight acidic heat, but not enough to blow out the whole hoagie.  For cheese, provolone is most common, but you know how it goes with cheese and seafood in Italian cuisine.  I'd considered shaving some bottarga on as a seafood surrogate for the cheese, but didn't get any in time.  Finally, the whole hoagie gets a liberal dousing of oil and vinegar, and hefty shake of Italian herbs and spices.

The SF Oyster Nerd Seafood Hoagie, Philly Style

The end result, absolute seafood hoagie bliss.  No joke, it actually worked.  I wish my home deli slicer could have gone thinner on the cuts, but beyond that, it was incredible.  I was seriously blown away.  Like most of you, I too was skeptical at the start of this project.  My culinary compadre, who's usually on board with most of my whacky ideas, called me "sick in the head" when I bounced this one off him.  But I knew I could make the parts well, and this surprisingly ended up as a genuine "the sum is greater than the parts" situation.  A slightly crunchy, toasty roll into savory layers of smokey tuna, rich mortadella, and briny octopus, all cut by bright, tart, and heavily seasoned fixins.  I even brought half to my die-hard-all-things-Philly neighbor to try and he was equally blown away.  I'm considering that proof of concept.  Watch out, Greater Philadelphia Area.  The SF Oyster Nerd Seafood Hoagie just might be coming to a pop-up near you.

Cheers,

The SF Oyster Nerd

Seafood Sausages

Seafood sausages have been on my mind for a long time.  I talked about them way back in a 2017 post when I made Oyster Chicharrones.  Cooking seafood at home is still something I feel is pretty foreign to many Americans.  Sure, salmon and crab cakes make the occasional appearance, but we seem to be more comfortable with pot roasts and spaghetti bolognese rather than stuffed squid or salt crusted whole fish.  There has been incredible progress in chefs making traditional and identifiable dishes with a fishy twist.  Josh Niland of Fish Butchery is definitely most notable in his creations of swordfish belly bacon, blue eye trevalla cheeseburgers, and tuna meatball subs.  Still, I believe there's a shameful underrepresentation of seafood on American dining tables and clever ways out there to fix that. 

Grinding beef for hot dogs

I've always wanted a proper meat grinder and sausage stuffer, and thanks to my siblings, I finally got one for my birthday.  I'll be honest, the catalyst that finally made it happen was wanting to create my own homemade kid's cuisine like hot dogs and chicken McNuggets.  I'm about to be a pappy, and I want that kid to enjoy the classics without my guilt of just boiling an Oscar Mayer wiener and tossing it in a bun.  Ambitious and idealistic, absolutely.  That kid will have his fair share of Kraft Mac and Cheese and Tombstone pizzas, no doubt.  I'm by no means fully committing to an organic only, zero gluten, sugar free, did-the-chicken-have-friends type diet for my kid.  While you have to be pragmatic, nobody feels good about heating up some Gorton's fish sticks and feeding them to their children.  If I can mix in the occasional house cured pepperoni or homemade turkey lunch meat, I'll consider that a win.  

Anyway, with a new meat grinder on hand and the desire for seafood whimsy in heart, seafood sausages naturally came next.  Sausages are one of the most classic, iconic, and identifiable American foods.  It's debatable on where they originate, so I won't open that whole cultural appropriation can of worms.  Either way, everybody loves a good sausage.  And get your minds out of the gutter.  This is a PG kid-friendly blog, now.  Just kidding.  However, from ball park franks to spicy Italian on pizza, everyone enjoys eating sausage.  What better way to bring seafood and identifiable comfort food together than in a sausage?  So, with knives sharpened and hog casings soaked, let the grind begin.    

Smoked Trout Hot Dogs

Lake Michigan Trout and Salmon

I was fortunate enough to have a vacation this summer to visit my girlfriend's family in Wisconsin.  If anywhere in the states is sausage country, it's definitely the Midwest.  Funny thing too is that everything is called a "brat" and not a sausage.  Spicy Italian brats, breakfast brats, lamb merguez brats.  I figured I'd even see bratwurst brats, but it wasn't that bad.  Just classic brats.  More importantly, we had the opportunity to go fishing on Lake Michigan.  It was a pretty amazing experience.  Milwaukee felt just like a coastal city as we shoved off the pier, and even more so while we filleted our twelve salmon and lake trout as we came back into port.  We enjoyed some fresh on the grill that evening, though our haul was way too large for our modest party of six.  Luckily, a neighbor was kind enough to smoke the rest, allowing us to enjoy the delectable lake treats back in the Bay Area.

With now a little over three pounds of smoked lake trout in my fridge, I knew I was going to make smoked trout hot dogs.  The concept has always just seemed right to me.  Snappy casing, paprika and garlic forward beef, and that briny, smoky trout flavor underneath it all.  Just makes sense.  As it was my first attempt at homemade hot dogs, I needed a little guidance, though.  Ryan Farr, a Bay Area sausage legend of 4505 Meats, had a comprehensive recipe in his book I used as my base. 

Beef Mock Tender from the Chuck, Beef Fat Back, Smoked Lake Trout, Lamb Casings and a
Mixture of Cure #1, Kosher Salt, Paprika, Onion Powder, Garlic Powder, and Black Pepper

I started off with grinding the beef and fat back.  Rule one of sausage making is everything must be ice cold, otherwise the fat will render and the meat will smear, leaving you with a nasty meat paste rather than a nice fine grind.  Bad bacteria also love room temperature meat, so, safety first.  After thrice through the grinder, I was ready to add the spices and emulsify the sausage, slowly pouring in ice cold water as it blended in the food processor.  The water helps the emulsification in making it smooth and keeping it cold, preventing it from breaking, just like a mayonnaise can.  Once all this was completed, I quick fried a tablespoon of the mixture for flavor and seasoning.  Tasting just like Coney Island's finest, I now had a smooth hot dog farce ready for casing and smoking.  I lightly folded in the smoked trout in hopes of retaining some of the fish's texture and transferred it back to the grinder for stuffing.  A quick few pumps into the lamb casings and I had trout hot dogs ready for the smoker.  Yes, I was going to really nail home that smoked flavor (and the recipe called for smoking the hot dogs, so I figured I should stick to the plan).  

 

A seemingly endless hour later, I had twelve beautifully smoky lake trout hot dogs. The color was a bit disconcerting at first as they were a pale gray right after stuffing, but the smoking process really brought out that classic red hot hue.  Paprika, beef and cure #1 do the trick, apparently.  Flavor and texture were spot on for a classic hot dog.  Unfortunately, the delicate and fragile fish didn't hold up through the stuffing process and melded into the beef farce.  One of the disadvantages of an electric vs. hand pump sausage stuffer.  However, they had that perfect snappy casing and a flush, meaty interior.  Taste was just like a Nathan's 100% all beef frank with a savory seafood finish.  Full garlic and paprika up front, layered with smoky, salty lake trout on the back.  Moisture was the only slight issue.  They were a little drier than I'd hoped.  But hey, most people drown their dogs in condiments anyway, so no real problem.  Dressed up with prepared horseradish, tomatoes, chives, radish, and red onion, they'd be a welcomed twist to any classic 'murican BBQ.  These are most certainly a make again and a great addition to my slowly growing sausage arsenal. 

Low Country Boil Sausages

 

I immediately knew I wanted to do one of those gimmicky meal-in-a-sausage versions of something.  You know, those cheeseburger, Thai chicken curry, or chicken parmesan sausages you often see.  Got me thinking of what I could do for seafood, and a low country boil or frogmore stew quickly came to mind.  Heaps of crawfish, mussels, peel'n'eat shrimp, crab, spicy andouille sausage, potatoes and corn all steamed or boiled in tons of Cajun or Old Bay seasoning.  They're kind of a lot of work to put together.  Well, not terrible, but you know you're not throwing together a crawfish boil at home on a casual Tuesday evening.  What if that could all be brought together in a sausage for convenient consumption?  I also knew I needed to make something that my girlfriend, who pretends to like seafood while in reality does not, might actually eat.  She likes some shellfish, at least, so this could work.  A sausage like this would require some sort of base.  I suppose I could have made an emulsification out of crawfish tails and shrimp.  However, I wanted a hearty, rustic and coarse ground sausage.  A neutral base was needed, and nothing is more neutral than good old "tastes like chicken."  Seemed like a good carrier for the Old Bay and wouldn't overpower the other components.

Turkey Legs, Crawfish Tails, Andouille Sausage, Corn,
Parsley, and Old Bay Seasoning

As you may have noticed from the picture, I got two whole turkey legs rather than a bunch of chicken thighs.  Seemed a little more fun to me, plus my Local Butcher in Berkeley didn't have enough chicken thighs on hand.  Poultry is poultry, right?  There's also something appealing about single bird, pig, cow or whatever sausage.  It feels good to go from whole muscles to end product.  Takes away the whole "lips and assholes" element of sausage making, I think. 

I started out by deboning and coarsely grinding the turkey legs with skin on.  Sausage requires fat, and with turkey meat being so lean, the skin was the best source for this.  Also, I'd forgotten what a pain in the ass butt (sorry, no profanity in front of the kid) removing the tendons from the drumsticks was.  Seriously though, when raw, it's like deboning a fish on steroids.  With a solid base ground up, I started mixing in the crawfish tails, cubed andouille, parsley, corn and ample amounts of Old Bay seasoning.  I felt like quite the clever one using frozen corn, too, knowing it would keep the mixture ice cold as I pumped the casings.  F*ckin' smart!  Visually, they came out great.  A slight Old Bay colored tinge speckled with bright orange and white crawfish tails, verdantly green parsley, and eye-popping yellow corn.  If I ran a meat and seafood counter, these would be at the front of the case. 

 

     How'd they taste though?  Well, I can say turkey was a stupid idea.  I should have known.  For those of you who immediately thought "turkey's not going to work," you were right.  As soon as I started mixing the ingredients together and smelling them, I knew it was going to be too strongly turkey flavored.  A quick pre-stuffing fry of the mixture for taste confirmed.  Turkey meat, let alone the much gamier turkey leg meat, was going to be too fowl (dad jokes!) to let the other flavors come through.  I'd already crossed the Rubicon, though, once everything was mixed, so I had to forge on.  The Old Bay was pleasantly prominent, and there were nice textural bites of crawfish, corn, and andouille here and there, but it was primarily a seafood seasoned turkey sausage.  Hey, it would be disingenuous not to share my failures.  They did taste pretty good, just not what I was going for.  Perhaps a rebranding would be in order.  Old Bay Bird Brats or something?  I did see a recipe for a potato sausage in one of my sausage making books, so that will be base in my attempt at a Low Country Boil Sausage 2.0.  I'll keep y'all updated.

Seafood Boudin Blanc

Fish Sausage, Celeriac Puree, Peas, and
Onion Sauce in Whole Fish Butchery

Both my seafood sausages admittedly hadn't exactly been seafood so far.  Sure, they were seafood inspired, flavored, and partly comprised, but they were mainly based in meat.  It made sense.  When it comes to sausages, meat is more stable, easier to work with, less perishable, has a higher fat content and is a convenient way to use up scrap and discard.  Seafood is missing quite a few of those properties.  However, I knew I wanted to do at least one entirely seafood sausage.  A quick Google showed there are a few versions out there, primarily shrimp mousselline formed into a sausage shape.  I wanted a fish base, though, so my inspiration came from the aforementioned Josh Niland and his book's aquatic spin on the classic bangers and mash.  I also love the classic French boudin blanc sausage, and imagined the emulsified texture and flavor could translate well into a seafood sausage.

The entire world of boudins and puddings is quite the rabbit hole, or rather a veal, pork, and chicken hole.  There are countless versions of white, fine textured sausages with different meats throughout the world with very strict do's and don'ts. Creole boudin must have rice, Irish and Scottish white puddings use oats, and in France, they must have milk or cream.  The French also have a contentious debate on whether or not to include fillers or binders such as bread crumbs or eggs.  Rethel, in Northern France, even has a legal protection defining what a Boudin Blanc de Rethel must be.  A lot to consider and respect, but I just wanted to make a pure seafood boudin blanc, not become a culinary criminal.

Bay Scallops, California Halibut, Salmon Bellies, Shallots, Garlic,
White Pepper, Marjoram, Sage, Nutmeg and Hog Casings

  I'll admit, the only area of expertise I have with boudin blancs is knowing that I love them.  As I said, there's a whole lot to consider and centuries of debate as to what defines them.  With my rudimentary research, the main ingredients seemed to be sage, marjoram and cream or milk.  Other additions vary from mushrooms and truffles to raisins and apples.  I decided to stick with sage, marjoram, and cream, adding in white pepper, nutmeg, and some shallots and garlic sautéed in butter.  As sausages need fat, and this was a seafood only sausage, the best source for this was salmon bellies from Tokyo Fish Market in Berkeley.  Bay scallops' texture and consistency would help fortify the farce and round out the flavor, so I added them in as well.  Both went into the food processor and cream was slowly added.  With a well set salmon belly and scallop mousse, I folded in cubed Californian halibut filet with the herbs and spices.  It all came together well, hopefully with some of the firm texture of the halibut remaining once pumped into the casings.  Boudin blancs, much like hot dogs, are fully cooked before reheating for serving.  I decided on steaming them, shocking them in ice water to stop the cooking process, then browning up in a cast iron.  

The end result, absolutely wonderful, I don't mind saying.  They turned out exactly as I'd hope.  A nice, smooth, fine textured seafood sausage from the cream emulsification with the firmer cubes of halibut peppered in.  The contrast was great.  Flavor wise, they were also spot on.  Very garlic and shallot forward with a savory fragrance from the sage, marjoram, and nutmeg, backed up with a slight kick from the white pepper.  The hog casings browned up well in the cast iron and they came out exactly like a classic boudin blanc, just with a seafood spin.  A slight issue, similar to the smoked trout hot dogs, they were little drier than I'd have liked.  I'm not sure if this was from steaming them a bit too long, or needing to up the salmon bellies for more fat.  I'll have to play with that a little in future, but a buttery sauce would easily combat that on this version.  In terms of how to serve, I can't think of anything better than over a bed of mashed potatoes with an onion gravy.  Perhaps some citrus braised leeks or lemon-thyme roasted vegetables on the side would be a pleasant addition as well.  Incorporating some sort of acid, especially of the citrus variety, always goes well with seafood.    

All in all, my seafood sausage experiments went just as I'd hoped.  A few successes, a few failures, and invaluable experience and learning opportunities on where to improve.  And the possibilities are endless.  So many things could be next.  Octopus pepperoni, smoked black cod bratwurst, salmon mortadella.  Hopefully my kid won't be too picky of an eater, but this will certainly be a cheeky way to mix some omega-3's into his diet.  Wishing you all the best and hope you get a chance soon to try some fun and whimsical culinary experiments too.

Cheers,

The SF Oyster Nerd