Pan-fried Polish black pudding

This dish is the very essence of Prymitywna Kuchnia. It’s as primitive as the headlines on Polish news sites or the bunch of Polish Army officers in the film “Jack Strong”. In fact, it gives Marshal Kulikov himself (as portrayed by Pasikowski) a run for his money in the primitiveness stakes. And it’s every bit as handsome as Sasha Ivanov.

Why all the comparisons with a film about Kukliński? Somewhere I read that it was a thriller “within our capabilities”. If so, that doesn’t say much for our capabilities. I’ve just watched “Jack Strong”, actually, and the weakness of this particular Strong has made quite an impression on me.

I won’t go on at length, but my biggest gripe is with Dorociński’s acting. In my ever so humble opinion, they’re trying desperately hard to make Kukliński out to be a romantic hero torn apart by his emotions. Oh God, how he suffers in that film. And the whole gang of morons who kept society by the throat for a good half-century haven’t the faintest idea what’s going on. It’s feeble.

That isn’t how I pictured a CIA agent in the Polish army. I doubt the CIA pictured him that way either. That’s one objection among many, of course, but this was supposed to be about black pudding, not a film that’s a load of tripe.

My black pudding is primitive and looks it. And it tastes like black pudding. A word on why I make it this way, in a frying pan. Usually you think of a sausage cooked on the barbecue, its contents elegantly oozing out of the casing. I’ve come to like it that way too and even eat it occasionally. Once upon a time, though, you couldn’t have paid me to touch it.

What horrified me about a sausage in a gut was the gut. The pig intestine the black pudding comes in, that is. So whenever we had black pudding at home, Mum would take it out of the skin for me and fry it up nicely with onion and a bit of bacon. That’s the black pudding that stuck with me. So when I make it at home these days, which isn’t often (I think the last time I ate any was about half a year ago, off the grill at some bar), this is the way I do it.

How does it taste? Better than the barbecued stuff. It’s seasoned and there’s some good cold meat and onion in there. Primitive black pudding de luxe. I wouldn’t recommend it before a date (BTW, you can enter the competition on my Facebook fan page), but once in a while, when you fancy something different? Absolutely.

At a glance: 

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Serves: one hungry bloke’s portion

Calories: they’ll end up in your gut anyway, so who cares.

Ingredients for Prymitywna Kuchnia’s black pudding:

• 2 small black puddings
• 1 small onion
• 3 medium shallots
• a few slices of cold meat (ham in my case)
• freshly ground mixed peppercorns
• salt
• hot ground paprika
• olive oil

Recipe (exceptionally primitive):

I peeled and diced the onion and shallots. I cut a few slices of cold meat into small pieces too (rather haphazardly). I fried everything in a pan in hot olive oil.

Once the onion was translucent, I sliced the black pudding into thin rounds and tossed them into the pan. I didn’t stir yet. I salted them lightly and seasoned them with freshly ground mixed pepper and paprika. Then I gave it all a good stir.

I fried it for just a moment, then mashed each round thoroughly with a big wooden spoon until I had an even mush of black pudding, onion and ham. I turned down the “heat” (from 6 to 4 on my scale of 1 – 10) and stirred thoroughly. I fried it for another 4 – 5 minutes or so. All done. I served it with a bread roll and a vinegar-pickled cucumber (standing in for the lightly fermented cucumber that goes best with black pudding). Enjoy!