Chinese Sausage (Lap Chong)

Hello loyal fans! I am remiss for not updating earlier. Though odd foods have been cooked and drafts have been written, my digital camera's USB cable has been misplaced. Coming from a guy who now buys burners instead of real cell phones due to a high loss-to-retain ratio, this might his might not surprise some of you. So, being the big spender I am, I decided to chuck all sorts of loot at Best Buy and drop 20 ducats on an external memory card reader. It's parked next to my Maserati. Those are the sort of high-profile purchases you can expect around here. Anyway, my stockpiled freezer is beginning to look a little Dahmer-esque at the moment, and I do have a lot of updates to write, so I'll just have to keep sorting through the deluge of fan mail coming in at a torrential pace begging for more posts (/sarcasm).

I saw Chinese sausage, or lap chong, at a new Korean market that just popped up in Virginia. And by Chinese sausage, I mean the Vietnamese version of it, lap xuong. Either way, I get the distinct impression that the store proprietors are still middling with their first CD of Rosetta Stone English, because the phonetic spellings are hilarious. I'm just glad they sell "sasej."

Much like the fare you see in your local grocery store or Wilt Chamberlain's veritable harem, lap chong cames in a variety of flavors. Usually these range from a composition of pork, pork fat, liver, and now more commonly chicken (in Canada and America), and often are much sweeter than those you see in your local markets. Not surprisingly, Chinese sausage is most typically eaten in...you guessed it, China! It is also commonly eaten in other parts of Asia and has a growing presence in North America. Until I realized what lap chong was, I had eaten it unknowingly--in exceeding bulk--in a classic dim sum dish called "lo mai gai," or sausage, chicken, mushrooms, and herbs steamed with glutinous rice in a lotus leaf. When done correctly it is divine, and I highly suggest that next time you hit up Chinatown for lunch you try it.

The bright red color and cheap vacuum packaging gives the lap chong all the allure of an overly plump Slim Jim. And unless you're my friend, Teddy Bear, who thinks the height of fashion is a Redskins jersey, booty mesh shorts, and unlaced Timberlands, or you still think that professional wrestling is real and/or entertaining, you are grossed out by Slim Jims. Upon its unveiling, the sausage looks and feels like a cheap, reasonably decent cured meat. (I wonder why.) The smell, however, is unmistakably like that of an overripe melon. In other words, cloyingly sweet and altogether unappealing. Unsure of my odoriferous new offering and faced with the dilemma of what I was going to make, I said to myself, "Self? What is your favorite sausage dish?" I didn't have time for cassoulet or the wherewithal to make lo mai gai, so jambalaya it was going to be. Sure, jambalaya isn't a classically Chinese dish, but the root of the Cajun word just comes from a French and African conglomeration of ham, jambon, of the, a la, and rice, ya. Last time I checked, Chinese people eat swine. And, you know, occasionally a little rice.

Chinese Jambalaya

1/2 package 14 oz. package of lap chong, cut into half moons

6 quail, broken down

1 lb. shrimp, peeled and deveined

1 small onion, small diced

2 stalks celery, small diced

1/2 red bell pepper, small diced

1/2 green bell pepper, small diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

2 1/2 C Thai jasmine rice

1/2 C Chinese cooking wine/rice wine/sherry

6 cups chicken stock (see following recipe)

fresh shiitake or maitake mushrooms, thinly sliced

ground Szechuan peppercorns, to taste

salt and fresh cracked black pepper, to taste

Scallion greens, for garnish and to taste

Sriracha sauce at your discretion

Reinforced Stock

1 1/2 32-oz. cans/cartons of low-sodium chicken stock

1 10-oz. bottle of claim juice

leftover quail carcasses

tails (and shells, if possible) of 1 lb. shrimp

2 tsp. Szechuan peppercorns

4 scallion whites

1 1" knob ginger, crushed

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

tops of 2 stalks of celery, leaves included

4 stalks parsley

For the stock, sweat the shrimp shells in a little peanut/vegetable oil over medium-high heat until they are translucent. Add the other ingredients and cook on a low simmer until the quail meat is tender on the bone, or around 30-40 minutes. Skim the fat off the top of the liquid (there should be very little, if any) and strain the stock, then pull the quail meat and reserve it in the stock for the jambalaya.

Heat a large pot on medium-high heat, add a little vegetable oil, then add the lap chong. Quickly let it crisp and remove it onto a paper towel. Sear the sectioned quail meat and remove it as well. Add the small diced vegetables (aka, the Cajun Holy Trinity), season, and sweat them off until the onions are slightly translucent (about 3-4 minutes with that many vegetables). Add the protein back into the pot along with the stock. Simmer for 20 minutes, then add the sherry, mushrooms, and rice, cooking the rice 2 minutes shy of the manufacturer's instructions. Add the shrimp and finish cooking. Remove from heat, stir quickly, then let sit, covered, for 5 more minutes. Garnish with scallions and serve with Sriracha sauce.

Much to my dismay, the lap chong was the only disappointing thing about this dish. My friend Charlemagne and I disliked the overly sweet taste of the meat, but the three women who tried the jambalaya were all big fans of the sausage. Or they were just being really nice until they talked about it behind my back. Zing! Maybe females have a larger tolerance for sweet foods? Regardless, I can honestly say that this was the first time I've picked something out of my dish since I was a little kid. Fortunately, and kind of strangely, the lap chong didn't permeate in to the rest of the dish that I could taste. The quail (ware the bones!) and shrimp had absorbed the flavor of the savory reinforced stock quite nicely, so I managed just fine. The jambalaya was delicious; the Chinese sausage was not.

Look for a new post soon; there's some durian in the freezer.