Saucisse, Dumplings and More!

Saucisse (raw sausage) is often used in soups in Finland. It usually divides opinions, some like it and some hate it. For me it works even in ramen! This is a specialty I came up with on my own. I quess it was because Finnish sausages are so plain and I wanted to add more taste and colour to them. Additionally, saucisse is quite high up with fat, so adding vegetables introduces a more healthy aspect to them. And they taste better, too!

Saucisse Dumplings

For these you need 1 kilograms of (plain) raw sausage, 2 largish carrots, 2 onions, 2 garlic cloves and 5 cm long piece of parsnip. Roughly, you should have vegetables 1/4 - 1/3 of the amount of raw sausage. To spice it up you need black pepper and fresh parsley.
Begin by peeling veggies, grate carrot and parsnip. Dice garlic and onion very thinly (because big pieces stick out of the dough and make the dumplings fragile).

Heat up a frying pan and put in some olive oil. Put garlic and onion in first, saute lightly and add the rest of the veggies. Let them heat up but do not fry them, in other words, saute them so that they became soft and loose some water but do not allow them get brown. Put the softened vegetables in a bowl and let them cool a bit. Then squeeze raw sausage out of the skin to the bowl and mix thoroughly.

Put a very large kettle of water to boil. I usually use my pasta kettle but anything big will do. Cover with a lid and start making the saucisse dumplings. It helps to have cold water running (or in a bowl) for dipping hands when the dough starts feeling sticky (same trick with regular meat balls). Place the dumplings next to the kettle and when the water starts to boil put them in. Beware splashes of hot water! First the dumplings will sink but they rise to the surface of water when they are ready. You can check that they are ready by picking one up and halving it.

They are great with pasta or potato, for sauce you can use (for instance) yoghurt with garlic or a plain tomato sauce. Here's a recipe to my very simple tomato sauce.

2 onions (and garlic, if you like)
10 cm piece of celery
(a small piece of yellow bell pepper)
a small cart of crushed tomatos
Black pepper, salt and 1 tsp sugar

Dice onions and celery stick. Heat oil in a pan and saute onions, add vegetables and let them become slightly softer. Add tomato and let simmer. Put in the spices, mix and let simmer some more. Ready!

You can make a smaller batch or freeze them, though freezing doesnt really compliment their taste. When Im making this dish at my mom's, I dont have to worry about how to freeze or use them later on; they tend to disappear from the fridge overnight!