Sanguettes - Blood Cakes

I love black pudding, especially the smooth French ones, so I had been meaning to try a sanguette for years. When ducks that have been raised for foie gras are killed, their blood is saved to make these sort of thick pancake things. Seasoning, garlic and oil goes into the pan, before the congealed blood. When it's cooked, it just looks like a lump of boudin noir (black pudding without cereals).

At the winter 'fat market' - where foie gras and all the other parts of the bird are sold - my mouth watered as I selected the tastiest-looking sanguette from the nicest-looking stall. It was wrapped in wax paper, and I could hardly wait to get it home.

Back in my kitchen, I prepared a plate with some dressed salad leaves and a dollop of special pink peppercorn mustard. Butter sizzled in the pan as I put in the heavy, hard sanguette. A couple of minutes on each side, then straight on the plate and I took my treasure out into the sun, to enjoy with a glass of red.

It was disgusting. I can't remember disliking any food or drink as much as this. I attempted to enjoy it several times before actually binning the thing - unheard-of behaviour for me.

It had the dense, dry, saliva-sapping texture of the liver that was served in English schools in the 80s - the reason so many of my contemporaries can't stand liver. It tasted bitter and musky and not of much else. Dried blood and boiled offal. That shouldn't be surprising I suppose, but I normally love offal and blood products!



The difference must be that boudin noir is blood mixed with loads of cream, fat and seasoning. Maybe duck's blood would also be nice if it was mixed with the same volume of cream, loads of fat, heavy seasoning, caramelised onions and a lot more garlic...?

Elderberry Wine and Friends, South-West France

Not really cuisine from the far corners of the planet, but definitely a gastronomic triumph, and some might find it adventurous...

My best mate Perry's been cosying up for autumn and having some culinary adventures in his own kitchen in France, with the help of wood-burners (yes, plural) and Unglum the cat (whose fave food is tomatoes, by the way). Italian heart stew, pizza dough flatbreads puffed up over a barbecue for kebabs, Moroccan meatball and egg stew, blood sausage omelet and freshly-collected oysters have been some of the mouth-watering delights on the menu over the last couple of weeks.

This is the elderberry wine the dude's been working on for two months, after collecting the berries in his garden. Perry carefully completed each stage exactly by the book, to avoid the risk of his precious potion turning to vinegar instead of alcohol. Success! It was all worth it. Now he has litres and litres of potent, fruity wine to get through. Lucky he's got good friends to help him out! See tasting notes below.

The beautiful results of weeks of careful work.


"It tastes really fruity, but not in a dodgy way, a bit like really weak ribena, but it smells wonderful. I think it should become amazing, because everything I've read says it should be undrinkable before Christmas at the earliest - maybe it's just my vin de table standards! It is certainly pretty strong even at this early stage - all I had was the glass in the picture and I really felt the effect strongly as you can probably tell from my email." - Perry Lancaster