These corn tortilla tacos are made with bacon and duck sausage to which they add pico de gallo, chipotle aioli, and pickled onion. The sausage is crumbled like Mexican chorizo but it isn't oily; it's smoky, and I could taste both the bacon and the duck. These tacos have a balance of creamy, tart, and smoky, and the savory smoky flavor lingered in my mouth. These are apparently the best selling tacos at this location, and I can see why; they are tasty and unique. I may never have had these tacos had it not been for the fact that it was Independence Day and a lot of other places I'd been planning to go to were closed. I got lucky.
Location: Kluddes Kitchen & Bar, 110 Orange Street, Redlands, California. Date: July 4, 2019.
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These hardboiled eggs surrounded by sausage and then breaded and fried or baked until crispy were probably invented in England, not Scotland, and they are now bar food in many English style pubs in the United States. I had mine at the Royal Falconer in Redlands, California, where they claimed that their sausage was homemade. My two eggs were sliced in half and served with horseradish wholegrain mustard. The sharp and sour mustard cut the richness of the egg, and the taste was quite addictive. I would have liked more sausage around the eggs, as the layer of sausage was rather thin, but it was delightfully crispy. Pickled eggs are also wonderful bar food, but Scotch eggs are a little more substantial.
Location: Royal Falconer, 106 Orange Street, Redlands, California. Date: March 19, 2019. This was one of the set menu lunches (or lunch of the day) at a bar in the very quaint mountain town of Figaró in Catalunya. I could choose between black sausages, white sausages, or one of each (which is what I chose). The black sausage was blood sausage which turned out to be a beautiful savory pudding in a casing. It oozed out when cut. The white pork sausage was mild, savory, and even though it was juicy it seemed a little dry compared to the black one. The sausages came with fries that were a little soggy but that's actually how I like them; when they're fried until crispy you lose that nice potato texture and taste. To sum up, while I'm a big fan of white sausages, this was the first time I've preferred a blood sausage to a white one of any type!
Location: Bar El Cau, Figaró, Catalunya, Spain. Date: December 16, 2018. This sausage is flavored with lemongrass and is served with an oil and soy dipping sauce, fresh sliced ginger, and a little fresh cabbage and carrot. The sausage is mildly sweet and savory, but as you eat, the spice builds. The meat is fine textured pork, though I think there's also some vegetable in them, and the sausages are grilled before serving. The owner's brother makes these, so not only is this my first taste of Lao sausage, it's also an artisan treat!
Location: Tamayo's Restaurant, 800 SE Pioneer Way, Oak Harbor, Washington. Date: September 23, 2018. Leberwurst is German for liver sausage. Liverwurst, therefore, is half English and half German, but that's how pork liver and pork fat sausage came to be called in America. Liverwurst sandwiches are old school, and not too many places are doing them anymore, but Windmill Market, not far from my desert home, not only has it on their menu, but they do it really well. For my bread this time I chose rye, and for the cheese I chose Swiss. I asked for everything on it and so it came with mustard, mayo, tomato, lettuce, red onion, and dill pickles, as well as the thick slices of salty and creamy liver sausage. I chose potato salad for my side dish, and it tasted like it had a little honey in it. I ate outside in the garden where the temperature was in the high 70s even though it's January. It was a lovely lunch on a lovely day. Location: Windmill Market, 17080 Indian Canyon, North Palm Springs, California. Date: January 4, 2018. Chef Salvatierra was born in Argentina, he's of Italian descent, and he's married to an Austrian; thus, the menu at his restaurant, Bontá, features a fusion of Argentinian and Italian cuisine, and it also features German cuisine. I stayed on the Argentinian & Italian page and chose Gaucho Pasta. It was penne pasta with mushrooms, peas, and slices of sausage. The dish was tossed in a marinara sauce that included cheese and white wine. The sausage was supposedly home made Argentinian style, but to me it resembled sweet Italian sausage (I could taste fennel). The tomato based sauce was a bit creamy, undoubtedly due to the cheese in it, and there was plenty of it. The dish also included plenty of the sausage, most of which was hiding under the top layer of pasta. The chef made a visit to everyone's table, something I always enjoy, and our waiter was a real hoot. Turns out that he went to London and earned himself a master's degree in Shakespearean literature!
Location: Bontá Restaurant, 68510 E Palm Canyon Drive, Cathedral City, California. Date: December 3, 2017. This is a German sausage covered in curry flavored ketchup and sprinkled with curry powder. It was invented in Berlin in 1949 when a lady by the name of Herta Heuwer obtained both ketchup and curry powder from British soldiers. It was traditionally made with pork sausage, but I was told it was available with either beef or pork, but my waitress recommended pork. Curry was wafting in the air as the plate arrived. Wow! It came with hot potato salad and hot sauerkraut, but the wurst stole the show, as it should! This German restaurant in the Arizona desert sported knotted hardwood floors, old style wood furniture, and beer steins on wall racks. I decided to pair my sausage dish with Schlenkerla Rauchbier, a dark smoky beer from Bamburg. It tasted like campfire smoked meat, but in a good way!
Location: Das Bratwurst Haus, 204 S Madison Avenue, Yuma, Arizona. Date: September 17, 2017. At Alicante in Palm Springs, this North African lamb sausage is served with harissa (North African red pepper paste) and roasted sweet peppers. It's not every day that you find lamb sausage in the desert of Southern California, so that makes this merguez noteworthy indeed. Merguez is traditionally a spicy sausage, but here the spice is served on the side. The lamb sausage is a touch gamey, in a pleasant way, and it works well with the slightly tart sweet peppers and the mildly spicy pepper paste. I enjoyed this delicacy with a pitcher of sangria; that's just how I roll. Location: Alicante, 140 S Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs, California. Date: May 30, 2017. This dish, along with a Kloster Andechs beer, was a trip down memory lane. The dish consisted of hot German potato salad, hot sauerkraut, sausage of choice, German restaurant rye bread with butter and a slice of cheese, and dill pickles. I chose weisswurst (soft white sausage), a Bavarian specialty, which was served with the traditional sweet mustard as well as some sour mustard. Weisswurst is a favorite of mine, and it comes with a story. When I was seven years old, I stayed with my aunt in Germany for the summer holiday, and one nice day we walked together into town, along with the neighbor's dog Ari (a large poodle, if memory serves me right). We went to the metzgerai, one of those fragrant and spotless German butcher shops. On the way home, my aunt handed me a piece of white sausage. A while later my aunt asked me if I had given the sausage to Ari. I answered truthfully, “No, I ate it myself.” My aunt burst out laughing, and I ended up wondering why the butcher would give my aunt a piece of such delicious sausage for the dog! Many years later, around the time I turned thirty, I was back in Germany, and my cousin took me to Kloster Andechs, a holy mountain in Bavaria that sported a brewery. The mountain was actually just a hill, and I remember that there was liquid running down the hill as we walked up. I remarked that it must be beer running down the holy mountain. It may have been! That experience made me take note of the Andechs beer on offer at this German store and restaurant in California, and so their weissbier dunkel (dark wheat beer), with its nice balance of malt and hops, is what I chose to pair with the white sausage German Hot Plate that I enjoyed outdoors in the beer garden. Location: George's Market, 1023 Calimesa Blvd., Calimesa, California. Date: May 9, 2017. I had this plate for lunch outdoors in the restaurant patio. It contained a few surprises, and it ranks as one of the most interesting charcuterie plates I've ever had. It consisted of thinly sliced jamon serrano (Spanish ham), cubes of blue cheese, pieces of Spanish chorizo (sausage), homemade ricotta, honey in the comb, chicken breast smoked on the premises, Indian style lentil or bean wafers (pappadum), fruit chutney, and green peppers with carrot. Fresh thyme sprigs were the garnish. This plate was rife with flavor combinations, and one of my favorites was the ricotta cheese drizzled with honey. Pappadum with chutney and the thinly sliced Spanish ham was also quite a treat. There was nothing boring about this plate!
Location: Eight4Nine, 849 North Palm Canyon, Palm Springs, California. Date: October 10, 2016. |
AuthorChef Roland has been a legal resident of seven countries and has travelled in over thirty, documenting food along the way. He currently resides in the desert in Southern California. Categories
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