Virgin With a Kick

Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Records and Virgin Atlantic Airways, keeps expanding into new fields. In recent months, he introduced Virgin Vodka in England (and on Virgin flights, of course). Over there, anyway, bartenders can make a Virgin bloody Mary for non-teetotalers.

Gobbler Sausages

There’s no getting around it; sausage has to contain fat. But when it’s made with poultry meat, the fat level can be brought down to 25% (the hamburger level), and Bay Area sausage-maker Bruce Aidells has devised sausages stretched out with flavoring elements such as apples, mushrooms and sun-dried tomatoes that total only 12% or even 10% fat, which is comparable to turkey thigh.

“Flying Sausages: Simple, Savory Recipes for Creating and Cooking With Chicken and Turkey Sausages” by Aidells and Denis Kelly (Chronicle Books: $14.95) gives seven of these sausage recipes: chicken-apple; an herb-heavy Thai sausage; a spicy Mediterranean style, etc., plus about 140 recipes using these sausages. Aidells hastens to point out that sausage doesn’t have to be made into links stuffed in casings. Most recipes in this book call for sausage meat in loose or bulk form.

Aidells calls sausages “flavor bombs,” and that’s how they’re used in the recipes. Instead of being the main element of a dish, they’re usually a flavoring for soups, salads, pasta and the like. Even in the main course chapter, sausages basically flavor other ingredients such as fish (though there are half a dozen meatloaf recipes).

After a couple of chapters, this book may give you an eerie feeling that the entire universe has to do with sausage. Still, there aren’t any sausage dessert recipes here, though there is a (non-sweet) bread pudding with turkey-and-dried-tomato sausage, and in one recipe Aidells adds sausage and Parmesan to waffle batter.

Our Presidential Gourmets

For all the talk about Bill Clinton’s hamburgers, the most casual eater to occupy the White House in the last half century was Lyndon Johnson. He preferred foods that were spicy, filling and easy to chew (he liked his salad chopped so fine he could eat it with a spoon and his favorite dessert was tapioca pudding) and had breakfast in bed every day.