Plated: Boudin Noir Tart with Apple and Cheddar

(Tejal Rao)

On the plate: Boudin Noir Tart with Apple and Cheddar Crumble. $13

Bobby Hellen: “My grandmother was from Brooklyn, and the whole family would come to her house for these huge meals. I was really young, but I still hear stories about my grandmother's homemade sausage. I just recently found a book she owned from the late 60s that’s all about charcuterie. It's a crazy book. It's not that good or accurate, but it emphasizes how people basically used to take nothing and make something out of it. And I like that.

”Whenever I used to see blood sausage on menus I never got too excited about it, but now, oh man. The sausage is in a fresh tart shell made with pork fat, and topped with a cheddar cheese crumble and apple puree. It's super-simple but it's really sweet and savory. The sausage is basically a mixture of onion, fat back, lean meat, eggs, cream, and guanciale that I emulsify with blood, whisking it like you emulsify oil into mayonnaise. It's really bright red at that point and intimidating, and then we case it and poach it off. The second day, after a little aging, it tastes even better, and we take it out of the casing to serve it.

”Blood sausage is something really old world, but this is sometimes hard to get right because everything has to be fresh. I only make this dish when I can get really fresh blood, about twice a week. I just got two gallons today.”

Random line from Hellen’s sausage book, page 69: Tip #2: “Do not buy [frankfurters] at a ball park if the man selling them wears a mustache.”