Sai Krok Isan

Ingredients

• 1 kg fatty pork shoulder, coarsely minced (aim for about 30 per cent fat)
• 350 g cooked Thai glutinous rice, cooled
• 100 g garlic cloves, peeled
• 2 tbsp fine sea salt
• 1 tbsp white sugar
• 1 tsp ground white pepper
• 2 tbsp fish sauce
• 3 m natural hog casings, about 32 mm wide
• Raw cabbage wedges, young ginger batons, bird's eye chillies and roasted peanuts, to serve

Before you cook

• Rinse the hog casings inside and out under cold running water, then leave them to soak in fresh cold water for 30 minutes.
• Pound or blitz the garlic to a rough paste.
• Break the cooled sticky rice apart with wet hands until there are no clumps larger than a pea.
• Combine the minced pork, garlic paste, salt, sugar, white pepper and fish sauce in a large bowl.
• Mix hard with one hand for three full minutes, until the meat turns tacky and clings to itself.
• Work the broken sticky rice through the meat until it is evenly spread all the way through.

Steps

1. Fry a teaspoon of the mixture in a small pan for a minute and taste it, then correct the salt if it falls flat.
2. Thread a casing onto your sausage stuffer and fill it loosely rather than tight, so the rice has room to swell.
3. Twist the filled casing into short links about 4 cm long, alternating the direction of each twist.
4. Prick each link two or three times with a pin to let trapped air escape.
5. Lay the sausages on a rack in a warm spot out of direct sun, around 30 degrees, and drape them loosely with muslin.
6. Leave them to ferment for 3 days, until they smell distinctly sour and the meat has firmed and deepened in colour.
7. Move the sausages to the fridge as soon as they taste sour enough for you, and cook them within four days.
8. Set up a charcoal grill and let the coals burn down to a low, even heat with no flame licking up.
9. Grill the sausages for 20 to 25 minutes, turning them every few minutes, so the fat renders slowly and the skins blister rather than burst.
10. Cut one open to check: the rice should be soft and swollen and the pork opaque right through.
11. Serve hot with wedges of raw cabbage, batons of young ginger, whole bird's eye chillies and a dish of roasted peanuts.