Blood Pudding and Apple Breakfast Bake

This is a very descriptive title for a very simple dish. Slices of apple go into a small ovenproof dish, is topped by slices of blood pudding (or black pudding, or boudain in French), doused with a bit of maple syrup and baked till the the whole is warm.

This is my second time eating blood pudding. The first time was horrible. Apparently the sulfur in the eggs really doesn't mix with the blood pudding. This apple concoction is my friendly neighbourhood charcutier's recipe. He told me how you're supposed to spin your hand in the blood falling into a bucket so that all the coagulating stuff stick to your hand and all your left with is lumpless blood. Along with other ingredients it makes up what is known as blood pudding. And I have to admit that this was quite delicious. The only thing I'm not too sure about is the texture of the blood pudding. The taste is actually quite delicious. Doesn't really taste like blood although my blood consuming experiences aren't that diverse.

For many, if not most, eating blood pudding is weird and grosse. For me, head cheese, blood pudding, pig's feet and all other parts of animals that we'd rather throw away is a waste and a disrespect of the animal. Two generations ago, nothing was wasted. Now we're so used to excess that we waste more than we actually consume.

Plus, we're programmed to gag on things like worms in apples or tomatoes and blood pudding and all other things that we're tought is grosse. When you don't waste and you produce in an environmentally compatible way this is what you get. Worms, bugs and odd animal bits. I think we should push ourselves to undo the illogical gag factor that has been programmed into us. No more of this "space-age food" as a friend of mine has called it.

I, for one, want REAL food. Vive la revolution!

Blood Pudding in All Day Breakfast Salad

The fact that I was making a warm salad from the first chapter of Cook with Jamie was one thing. I mean, warm salad. Not even hot. Just warm. But the real kicker was that the recipe for "all day breakfast salad" asks for a major yuck factor ingredient, blood pudding. I thought to myself, what the hell, I'll try it. I'll get it from the French guy at the market who I know I can trust for quality and ignore all the stories I heard my parents relate where their parents had made them eat blood pudding. At least I could say that I ate it. I wasn't undaunted by a little blood.

To tell you the truth, I don't think it was the blood pudding that made this recipe kind of gross. You start off by cooking the blood pudding cut into rings with the bacon. Well the French guy at the market warned me that the blood pudding would come apart and that's the first thing that happened. But then you have to through some stale bread in. Now the recipe doesn't tell you to drain the fat. And it certainly doesn't mention anything about the bits of blood pudding that are floating around in the fat. So when you throw the bread in, all that happens is that a sort of greasy mush forms.

You then have to mix the mush with a handful of yellow endive leaves, an English mustard vinaigrette and top the whole with a poached egg. So I didn't mind the taste of blood pudding. Really. It's more of the grease factor and the fact that everyone I talked to made their ugliest face when I told them I had eaten blood pudding. Supposedly it's best when warmed up with apple slices. I unfortunately didn't have a chance to try this out. The blood pudding appeared in the trash before I could use the rest of it. It's a mystery how that happened. I swear.