TOTAL sausage fest.

as i've mentioned in the past, since moving to NYC a decade ago, two of my siblings have followed me down to the city. my sis is a doctor working & living on the upper east side & about once a month, on a rare day where she's not working, we try to get together for a meal. usually i head over to her studio apartment & she whips up one random dish or another. this past sunday, i visited her & she concocted a tomato, spinach & onion indian dish that had big chunks of tuna in it. although neither of us could remember having tuna in an indian dish, it somehow worked.

before i left, she gave me a jar of java-gourmet sicilian citrus java rub & a pack of aidells' cajun style andouille minis that she bought without realizing that they contained nitrates, which she can't eat. her allergies are my reward! aidells is a company founded by chef bruce aidell, a san fran dude who started making artisan chicken sausage twenty-five years ago. his first creation was a chicken & apple sausage but he's since expanded to make a dozen dinner sausages--flavors like pineapple & bacon and habanero & green chile--alongside fresh sausages, organic sausages, breakfast sausages, meatballs & the aforementioned minis. with the cajun style andouille minis, you get double smoked chicken & turkey with cajun spices.

since the package urged me to use or freeze them by the 19th, i decided to cook up all thirty mini sausages on monday night. technically, it was a few minutes after midnight when i put them in the pan, so i was flirting with EXTREME DANGER. as a late-night snack, i paired a dozen of them with four dainty-looking sauces--honey mustard, roasted garlic BBQ, sriracha & hoison. out of the four, the BBQ sauce best complemented the sausages.

they're fairly clean-tasting, especially for a sausage. out of the dozen i had monday night, i only came across one tiny chunk that made me say "mmm, cartilage!" the casing has a relatively firm snap to it & the spice blend definitely has an acceptable level of cajun heat & flavor. plus, they're TOTALLY CUTE! in all, they're pretty damn good & while i may not get these ones again, i'll definitely be trying one of chef bruce's other flavors real soon.