Pork Belly and Blood Sausage

Looks innocuous enough, doesn't it? A little something grilled, with some crispy kielbasa-like sausage atop a bed of lentils soaked in bacon... The other night at Solera, I wanted to try something new, so I ordered the Sherry Glazed Pork Belly with Morcilla and Lentils. I'd never had pork belly, but since I hear about it all the time, I thought it was time to check it off my list.

But when the server delivered our tapas, she said, "Here is the pork belly and blood sausage."

Blood sausage? I don't know why I didn't realize. Maybe I thought that morcilla was a red wine sauce or a type of Spanish cheese, but, relevant cognates or not, I didn't realize I'd ordered up such a culinary combo.

This pork belly and blood sausage virgin was terrified and thrilled.

My first taste of pork belly almost shut me down. Maybe the crispy edge could have saved the bite, but all I got was a thick slab of pork fat in my mouth. It melted easily, unlike the chewy fat that I always cut off my steaks, but the idea of eating pure fat made my stomach turn. Lucky for the pork belly, I noticed that the next bite actually had a bit of meat on it. Sure that bit of meat tasted good, but another chunk of melty fat came with it. That was it; I was done with the pork belly. Bring on the blood.

Morcilla is the Spanish version of blood sausage, which is made from the fat and blood of a slaughtered pig. My friend Brad, who drank rattlesnake blood in China, shrugged and said, "We had that all the time in the cafeteria when I was in Germany." All I remember from die Mensa was Mullermilch, pretzel rolls, and RitterSport, which tells you a lot about my dietary health at the time. As I sipped my wine, I imagined that big party for three days after the slaughter when the whole family celebrates by eating every part of the pig. That's sort of what I wanted for myself after a week of work. A night in the big city is a reason to celebrate; a night of tapas and puppet nudity at the Orpheum was about as good as it could get. Blood sausage was my celebration.

So I gently cut my morcilla in half, savoring the fantasy that I was, for the moment, even further from home than Minneapolis and trying blood sausage in Germany or Argentina or Spain. The insides crumbled slightly, but I choose a nice first bite. A little onion, a little sweet but rich, the sausage had a crispy edge. Like the pork belly, it melted in my mouth, but more like the melt of chocolate than fat. It was earthy, not meaty, and I would have been happy to finish it off, but instead, I passed the plate to share with my friends.

The lentils, by the way, were fantastic.