Making Wild Boar Mazzafegati
Aug 27th, 2008 | By Hank | Category: Charcuterie, Italian, Wild Game | Comments | 8 Comments |
I’ve been meaning to make mazzafegati for at least a year, but I was short a liver until recently, when Holly came home beaming after a wild boar hunt. “Look honey! I brought you a liver!” Yes, we have that sort of a relationship.
At first I was thinking, “uh…thanks, honey…a…liver.” But when life gives you livers, you make mazzafegati. Or at least I do. Mazzafegati is a soft, sweetish liver and pork sausage from Umbria, in central Italy. Think of it as a mild-tasting version of Mexican chorizo.
I’d made a version of it in 2006 when I shot my first wild boar, and it was good, but not great. So I researched the sausage a bit more and found that a) it was supposed to be soft; and b) it cries out for woodsmoke.
If you’ve ever worked with liver before, you may have noticed that the organ is very, very moist. Wet, even. And while moisture is critical in sausage-making, too much will ruin a batch. One way to deal with the extra moisture is to whip a sausage into an emulsion, like a hot dog. Another is to just go with it, which is what I did.
One of my great epiphanies as a cook over the years has been to bend to the will of the food. Cooks — chefs, mostly — who expend great effort and time to make food submit to their will are the same sort of people who think you can force right angles on Nature. You can, for a time, and the results can look pretty. But Nature always wins in the end, so I find it a more natural thing to work with Nature, not against her. The food knows what it wants to be; it’s your job to bring out what lies within.
My mazzafegati are spreadable, a little crumbly. I could have done the emulsion technique, and I may in the winter, but my house is just too warm right now to do it properly. As I learned when I made my Greek version of weisswurst, emulsified sausages require precise temperatures.
Flavorwise, they are rich. I used a fair bit of Bledsoe pork fat to cut the lean wild boar meat and the liver, then I added pine nuts to the mix, which made them even richer. But the black pepper, ground coriander seeds and a lot of orange zest — I actually used the zest from minneola tangerines — cut that richness pretty well.
I think these will be wonderful simply skewered and grilled over almond wood, then served as is or with sauteed honeyed onions. They would also go well as a bruschetta topping, or crumbled with mustard greens and pasta.
And as it happens, fall is fast approaching. Time to plant my mustard greens.
This looks awesome.
Hank, in your experience, how diligent do we need to be in looking for parasites in the livers of swine and cervids? (Or any of the other organ meats for that matter.)
These look incredible. I love liver sausage – give me a loaf of crusty bread, and I could probably polish off an entire string in one sitting.
Jamie: In my experience I rarely see parasites in wild critter livers — other than rabbits and some fish. And besides, I grind up and cook the heck out of my liver sausages, so everything will die. That said, I have never seen anything odd-looking.
Adele: They’d be a bit rich to eat a whole string!
That sounds SO tasty. I used to love liver as a kid – I know, weird…
Well, kick my skepticism down the trail! I don’t care a lot for liver, and after having liver pudding and many other such delights forced down my neck as a kid, I didn’t think I’d care for this stuff… but I’m glad I pushed my preconceptions aside and gave it a go, because this stuff was great!
Definitely rich, but not at all “liver-y”.
Good stuff, Hank!
Hola Hank!
You keep on surprising me boy! Hunting instead of going to the market to buy the meat, and making your own sausages… these are really exotic things to me
I wonder… why almond wood?
Hola Nuria! I use almond wood because it burns hot, has a nice aroma…and I have tons of it.
Hank, these sausages sound amazing! I love wild boar, and though I have never heard of these particular sausages I would gladly wolf several of these down with some of your zinfandel!