Hi friends,
All of my e-mails have been mostly meatless. This one wonât be - Sorry. The next ones will be vegetarian friendly again.
To me, there are two types of cooking. âWeekday-cookingâ means doing everything in your power to make an enjoyable meal within 30 minutes. And then thereâs âgoing all outâ creating something that your guests wonât forget â something that people will be raving about and posting on Instagram.
This dish is one of the latter categories; it has all the components: ingredients you would never think work together, it looks great, and you can set stuff on fire. Literally. How often have you seen somebody do this in their home kitchen?
Yep, I thought so. If you cook it for friends, theyâll believe youâre a pro, but the secret is: itâs straightforward, and except for burning down your house, thereâs not much that can go wrong.
Burning your apartment can easily be avoided if you follow two rules. Rule number one: limit the amount of alcohol you add to the pan. Thereâs a video of me failing to do this that I will show on request. Rule number two: donât light it while itâs under the hood. The hood or whatever exhaustion system you use should be turned off.
Boudin Noir in dutch is âbloed worstâ (blood sausage). In English, people often call it âblack puddingâ. My Jewish grandmother refers to it as the least kosher ingredient out there because it contains blood, the consumption of which is forbidden by Jewish law. It might sound gross, but 1) itâs not - even my grandmother loves it - and 2) itâs made from blood, which is often just thrown away, so you can feel good about wasting less meat.
Ingredients
for 6 servings
250 grams Boudin Noir sliced. Ask your butcher for one that is soft, so it will fall apart when you bake it. In Dutch we have a word for it called ârulâ.
3 pears (you can replace this with Apple) - diced in 1cm thick slices
3 teaspoons cinnamon
2 tablespoons of Calvados - if you donât have it pear liquor or vodka will work too.
Instructions
Bake the pears for a few minutes until they get glassy
Add the cinnamon and the boudin noir to the pan.With a spatula, cut the boudin noir in small pieces and move around the pan for about 2 minutes until itâs baked through
When the boudin noir is done, add the Calvados, remove the pan from the stove and set it on fire!
Iâve served this as a dish on its own, but I also combined it with coquelet as a starter. You can even combine it with ice cream and make it a meaty desert.
Hope you like it! Let me know if you made it and be careful with fire.
xoxo Sam
This piece was originaly published in Earnest (WeTransfersâ internal magazine).