GET THIS:Make your own sausages, with a little help from Ed Hick, writes HUGO ARNOLD.
THERE ARE 15 children standing around metal tables, up to their elbows in pig meat. Overseeing this event is Ed Hick, sausage supremo and dedicated Slow Foodie. Read the side of a packet of sausages and you will find the ingredients list is quite long. With Hick we get meat, salt and pepper, and quite a lot of time. Bowls of iced water are distributed for those little hands to dip into so the meat doesn't stick to their fingers. A large lump of shoulder meat is flattened out and then seasoned with a thimble of pre-measured salt and pepper. On top of this goes the belly meat, whiter as it contains more fat, but otherwise much the same in appearance.
Now the fun starts and within minutes the entire room is filled with the slapping and patting sounds of 15 children mixing their "dough". Then Hick produces a sausage filler, a piece of equipment which looks like an instrument of torture. Making your own sausages at home can be done without one of these, however, and in Hick's other hand is a silicon gun complete with some plumbing pipes stuck together to form a DIY version.
A tennis ball sized lump of mixed pork is then fed into the machine and soon a snake of sausage is appearing the other end, to the delight of the children present. This is no walk in the park however. Operating the sausage machine requires some considerable strength, and the tube of meat has to be fed into the collagen skins so they are not overstuffed but nor are they too loose. Teamwork is required.
Once all the meat has been used up, the linking is achieved by gently pinching the skins and twisting. Some go for chipolata sizes, while others seem intent on making snake-like lengths. But what is so utterly wonderful is the look of delight on the children's faces as they head home with a kilo of their own sausages.
We have become increasingly divorced from making our own food and this initiative is one small but important step in waking us up, not just to the enjoyment of making something as simple as sausages, but also realising what goes into our food.
Scattered about the workshop are four signs. The first is titled "Clean", and it advises us that the pork we are using comes from Ballon Meats in Carlow, that the salt comes from the UK and the pepper from India. The water used to do the washing-up is heated by a solar collector on the roof and the electricity is generated, as it has been since 1994, by wind turbines.
The next sign, "Fair", refers to pricing, and poses the interesting question of how to evaluate a fair price. If we want to pay €5 for an apple pie, would we be happy to make and sell one at that price? The third sign is "Good", and refers us to the contents of our bangers - meat with less than 15 percent fat and no preservatives, colours or artificial flavours. This means the sausages need to be consumed within three days, or frozen.
And the fourth sign? It's an oath, an oath to tell everyone about our experience. To divulge all and any secrets, to spread the word about good, clean, fair food.
Ed Hick's sausage-making classes are held occasionally. For details of the next one, call 01-2842700