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Charcuterie Board-ing School
The most important thing about a New Year’s party? Have fun! What’s not fun? Stressing about the food. As a guest you want to bring something portable, pleasing and easy for the host. As a host you want to serve a celebratory spread that doesn’t require being in the kitchen until next year. A charcuterie board selected from Sanagan’s deli counter does it all.
To start with, here are some seasonal Sanagan’s exclusives and house-made items that will really flatter your New Year’s platter.
Mangalitsa: Our special speck, copa, bacon and prosciutto from the rare-breed Hungarian Mangalitsa pig. (Ontario-raised, of course.)
Premium Pâté en Croute: Our decadent pastry-encased pâté gets even decadenter over the holidays. We’ll be packing them with things like venison, smoked duck breast and foie gras. Naughty? Nice? You should still get a slice.
Holiday Terrines: Our in-house charcutier has whipped up various recipes to bring a touch of luxury to your celebrations.
Boudin Blanc: A delicate white sausage flavoured with black truffles.
Pickles and Condiments: Beerhall and Old Yeller mustard, pickled red onions, giardiniera, red current and cranberry jelly. All made by our Kensington kitchen team.
THE FIVE POINTS OF THE CHARCUTERIE BOARD STAR
Lets look at the essentials that will make your tray tres bon!
1. Cold Cuts and Sausages
Salamis, hams, cured meats and dried sausages; nothing says Buffet the Appetite Slayer like a big spread of these bite-sized delights. The cold cuts are served as melt-in-your-mouth deli slices and the sausages can be chopped into rounds for variations in texture and shape.
2. Terrines and Pâtés
These rich traditional preparations are the essence of festive nibbling. Spread these around and your New Year’s toast will have never had it so good.
3. Cheese
Party snacking without cheese? No whey! Sanagan’s Kensington is proud to carry a selection of Ontario cheeses. Hard, soft, creamy and washed rind classic styles are available from artisanal producers like Monforte, Fifth Town, Back 40 and Forfar. If you're a Gerrard shopper, you can visit our neighbours at The Pantry for a similar selection.
4. Condiments and Pickles
The acidity of the pickles, the sweetness of the jellies, the bite of the mustard; they all add essential counterpoints of flavour, texture, colour and moisture to your board.
5. Grains
Fill ‘em up with crackers, toasts and bread. Even though we’re a butcher shop, we can help here too. Evelyn’s and our neighbour, Blackbird Bakery constitute Kensington’s cracker collection. And Gerrard’s got you covered with fresh Blackbird bread, daily.
THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF HAM AND CHEESE
As a starting point, you could budget 100 grams of proteins per guest. So for 10 partiers you could select 330 grams of cold cuts and sausage, 330 grams terrines and pates and 330 grams of cheese. Then add in your garnishes, bread and crackers and your guests will be greeted with the sight of charcuterie board that elegantly yet emphatically decrees — let the festive munching begin!
The above is a very approximate formula for an inexact art. Most customers will just come in, and with the help of a Sanagan’s meat hawker, build their charcuterie board navigating between their eyes and their wallet.
Musings on Cotechino
It was very early into my time working at Mistura, a mainstay of Toronto’s Italian dining scene, that I had my first exposure to cotechino. Bollito misto may not be the most well known Italian dish, but it is very classically Italian, relying on quality ingredients that have been simply prepared. This was the first time I had seen the dish, but while it was new to me, most of the ingredients were pretty common. The one that stuck out was the delicious cotechino sausage with its exceptional texture. It isn't a common ingredient in Toronto, and I haven't had much of a chance to work with it since, until our resident Charcutier Scott started making his own.
Like most great charcuterie, cotechino was born of a need to conserve limited meat supplies for the longest possible time. Rumour has it that this sausage's use dates to the early 1500's in Northern Italy. It is very similar to the traditional zampone, with the main difference being that zampone are typically stuffed into the hind trotter from the pig. The French produce a version of their own (which Scott has also played around with) called sabodet.
Our house-made cotechino is a combination of pork meat, fat and skin, and flavoured with ground coriander and warm spices such as allspice, cinnamon and ginger. It's the use of the pork skin that leads to the unique texture of the cotechino.
While you could, I suppose, use cotechino in most any instance where you would use regular pork sausages, there are a couple of applications we would specifically recommend for you. The combination of most accessible and traditional would be as part of your New Year's Eve dinner, served with lentils (which represent the prospect of money to come in the new year). Less traditional but equally delicious would be in place of our regular breakfast sausages at any holiday brunch. And then there’s bollito misto. This is a fantastic use of the product, but much better suited to someone who has a full day to devote to the prep, and 11 friends to share the meal with. However you choose to enjoy our cotechino, come in for it soon as we only make it through the holiday season. Felice anno nuovo!
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FAQ
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My Very Own Sausage Party
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