Two dishes with Dziuk's fully cooked sausage

To the southwest of San Antonio, about a half hour out U.S. 90 West, you come to a quaint Hill Country town called Castroville.

Founded in 1844, Castroville is called The Little Alsace of Texas because the first settlers were from Alsace, France. It is a small and scenic town. Castroville is also home to Dziuk's Meat Market.

Like just about every other building in Castroville, the meat market is built from the yellow limestone that quarried from strip mines all over the Hill Country.

Dziuk's opened in 1975, which would make it one of the more recent sausage-processing butcher shops in Texas. It soon became a local favorite and is today a landmark tourist destination for meat-lovers in the region.

Dziuk's sausage from Castroville

Although, Dziuk's is in a French Alsatian town, this is a Polish family. Edwin Dziuk started the first Dziuk's Meat Market in Poth, Texas. His parents were farmers in the Poth area, but with all due respect to the Dziuk's, who goes to Poth? A tiny town for to the southeast of San Antonio, it's really off the beaten trail.

The Castroville store is the one the Dziuk's are known for, but I think they still have a shop in Poth.

Once established in Castroville, Dziuk's became one of a very few Texas meat shops known to make Alsatian-style sausage. Of course, they also make Polish-style and other meats. Dziuk's is popular with wild game hunters, who bring their kill in for rendering.

I'm showing two dishes today, both served up with Dziuk's beef and pork Polish-style sausage.

I'm not doing a dang thing with this sausage but grilling it up and putting it on the plate. What I spent most of my time doing here was baking a Tex-Mex cornbread (the main ingredients being corn meal, cream corn, chopped poblano pepper, smoked cheddar cheese).

Serve with a vegetable. I used a mix of diced tomato, corn and okra.

Simple, quick, tasty, healthy. What more can you ask for?

The next dish took a little more time because I wanted to cook beans. So, I soaked pinto beans for a couple hours, then drained and put them in a crockpot for cook for several hours with a couple cubes of cilantro salt season, chopped fresh garlic and (very important) two chopped dried peppers; I used morita seca, as it is known in Florida.

This is smoked jalapeno, a/k/a chipotle. This gives the pinto beans a smokey, spicy, full-bodied flavor. And paired with Dziuk's sausage and Tex-Mex cornbread it makes me feel like I'm right back in the hills, eating at an old picnic table and catching the Hill Country air and sights.

I chowed on this with a dark beer, a Yuengling Bock. Based in Pottsville, Pa., Yuengling is the oldest brewery in the USA, and they make great beers!

Buen provecho!

Chorizo de San Manuel ... mmmm!

Chorizo de San Manuel, this is the good stuff. (Making smiley face)

Chorizo San Manuel

The spice blend in San Manuel is so well balanced. A lot of chorizos emphasize the paprika and you have to do things to tone it down - like, for instance, use less sausage, bring in a lot of vegetables.

Another complaint with other chorizos is they are very greasy and you have to drain them.

San Manuel is not the leanest chorizo, but it is pretty close. San Manuel comes from Edinburg, Texas (I went to college there), and it is about as close to the Mexican border you can get before you have to say it was 'made in Mexico.'

San Manuel is so well made, I'm going to do a really simple dish. The only thing going in the skillet besides eggs is about a quarter of a can of Herdez salsa verde (this is mainly tomatillo, onion and a very small amount of serrano pepper; it's a mild salsa).

Pierce the yolk and toss most of that down the drain, if you're concerned about cholesterol.

San Manuel chorizo in skillet with salsa and egg

I'm heating several corn tortillas on the comal while I cook choriezo and egg in canola oil on medium to low heat. Stirring in the salsa until the chorizo and egg are cooked, but still moist.

Also going forward in the kitchen is the coffee. There's a pot going with Cuban-style ground and a quarter scoop of cinnamon.

Heated up a third cup milk and poured in the coffee.

Okay, this is ready to go to the table, and now I actually have a dinette table to put it on, (just bought one).

Huevos con chorizo en tacos

I sprinkled a little cotija cheese on top and added a little more salsa. Now I can make breakfast tacos.

Buen provecho!

Here's more on the San Manuel story:

Since 1975, Chorizo de San Manuel has maintained the highest control of uniformity in quality and flavor. The main ingredient of the chorizo is the pork meat. We use only top quality cuts of pork which are purchased in large quantities and deboned in our own plant. 

The next ingredients that make our chorizo unique are the spices. We prefer to purchase the whole spices such as black peppercorns, garlic, a combination of chilies and other ingredients which are ground on site by our staff. 

WE DO NOT USE ANY ARTIFICIAL COLOR, FLAVOR, PRESERVATIVES, OR ADDITIVES! This means you get the best tasting chorizo that is 100% NATURAL.

Gumbo! Can Earl Campbell get along with perch?

I don't have any andouille sausage. Andouille is hard to find in Florida. Ah, but I do have some Earl Campbell's Hot Links!

Made in Waelder, Texas, which is located west of the center of the Houston-San Antonio-Austin triangle, Earl Campbell's Hot Links are a spicy sausage that will pass as a good substitute to andouille. But this is primarily a seafood gumbo I'm working on today.

I've said it before, it bears repeating, I often use sausages as a secondary meat, sometimes like a seasoning - the way you would use bacon bits. This is more of a secondary meat than a seasoning, though. Think of it as the "supporting actor" role in a movie. 

Here's most of what's going in the pot: 

There's more than 12 ounces of perch fillet going in the pot. I'm only using one link of Earl Campbell's Hot Links. 

I didn't get it in the picture, but there's about an eighth of a chunk of whole onion going in, too. Chopped up, of course.

From the produce section at the supermarket, I bought a single  container of okra. Chop it up!

Boiling water. I believe it was six cups for the box of Zatarain's Gumbo Mix with Rice.

Funny thing is the recipe on the box does not mention or take into account all this okra and the whole can of diced tomatoes. Heck! No way I'm making gumbo without okra and diced tomatoes.

I'm slicing a sausage link up and slicing perch fillet into bite-size bits and thinking, all that okra and diced tomatoes is going to add water content. It might dilute the seasonings in the gumbo mix. 

So I added two tablespoons of starch, a handful of rice and I added three shakes of soy sauce and six shakes of red pepper flake. I also took one dried guajillo pepper and shredded that in; this is more for flavor than heat - the red pepper brings the heat.

It all worked out fine, except for one thing. the gumbo mix with rice fell into the water in one clump. I expected it to pour out of the box, but it went blump! (That may not be a word, but that's the sound I heard.)

So, now I'm stuck working this clump like I would mole - stirring, mashing with the cooking spoon, around and around, over and over. Eventually, I got it all separated. 

Seafood and sausage gumbo in the pot

The fish goes in last. That way it doesn't overcook.

This makes a lot of food! I easily had enough for six. 

My daughter Shasta told me a story about how you can't make a little bit of gumbo. Her sister-in-law made a pot. It was too much for her family, so after a couple days, she took the pot to Shasta.

Shasta's family had gumbo for a few days, then she took the pot back, and it still had gumbo!

Gumbo's great. And I was in the mood for it. But unless you want to eat it all week or freeze some of it for later, you may want to throw a party.

Gumbo~!

Buen provecho!

Looking at veal sausage: Opa's Bratwurst

Being perfectly honest, I'm probably not the best person to critique this sausage. Opa's, a sausage maker in Fredericksburg, Texas, makes a variety of great sausages.

Bratwurst, however, is made with veal and pork. Veal is one of those meats that pushes my limits - both in taste and on some gut moral level. I'm a meat-eater, but baby calf conjures images of a life unfulfilled.

I don't really get the effect on me personally. Blame it on PETA? I've never had a problem eating cabrito (baby goat). I've even gone on the ranch and slaughtered my own cabrito. But male dairy calves going to slaughter is somehow a stretch. 

Then there's the taste. Veal has a distinctively bland dairy taste. It's like "uncured" meat, if that makes any sense. I assume this is because the calves primarily depend on mother's milk? Whatever the reason, it's noticeable. 

And on that unappetizing note, I get in the kitchen!

Opa's Bratwurst

I tried two dishes, using the same rice with vegetables as a side. the rice was boiled with chopped chipotle pepper. It was white rice, but the chipotle gave it color. And I threw in some frozen peas and carrots and a pinch of salt.

Both dishes are really simple. The first one involved a fresh, ripe avocado, which is cut into sections and symmetrically laid to either side of a grilled bratwurst. This is laid atop a quesadilla (two toasted corn torillas filled with cheddar cheese; it's like a grilled cheese sandwich but fewer carbs).

It was ok, but bratwurst wasn't the best choice for a sausage for these ingredients. A regular all-beef sausage would have worked better. 

For my next dish, I tried going with something more traditional. I took a slice of multigrain bread and put it on the grill with the brat and some poblano pepper strips.

I heated up sauerkraut. Lay the bread on the plate, add mustard, lay on the brat and smother that with sauerkraut. 

The poblano goes with the rice side dish. Going for taste points, I found this worked much better. Bratwurst is meant to go with bread and suaerkraut. I don't think you can get away from that. Putting a rice and veggie dish on the side is about as adventurous as you can get.

I've always seen brats in a bun with mustard and sauerkraut. If there was a side, it was usually German potato salad, but I'm trying to stay away from potatoes - that's a carb load too far. 

Bratwurst on bread with mustard, sauerkraut.

 Buen provecho!