Chorizo - not a sausage - a way of life.

So says Jose Pizarro who runs two of London's fashionable Spanish restaurants. Apparently in Britain it is even bigger than here. In England Waitrose has 17 different kinds. And my source for all of this information - an article by Harry Wallop in The Telegraph - says:

"If you open a book by Jamie, Nigel or Nigella you will struggle to find many dishes incorporating a Cumberland sausage or black pudding, but they are all stuffed with ideas about what to do with chorizo."

Here in Australia it's the same. For example, just browsing through the latest Coles Magazine turned up at least three, maybe four recipes which featured it, and not just as a supporting element but as the star of the dish.

I really tried hard to find out who and when it became such a big thing, but I have failed utterly. I guess it's just one of those things that has stealthily crept into our lives until it became essential. The above article quoted a magazine survey that asked the question, "What food item the interviewees now could not live without that wasn't available 10 years before." Over 42% named chorizo. I'm not sure it would be quite that high here - it's still a tiny bit hard to find in all its forms. Easy to find the smoked and dried, salami like version but the fresh version is a bit harder. And ours are all made here too I'm guessing. Not imported as they are in Britain.

Yotam Ottolenghi has the theory it's so popular because the chorizo basically includes everything we like in food. Well it's not really his theory - it comes from a book he was reading called Salt, Fat, Acid. Heat by Samin Nosrat - well the first part of the following quote - the second is from Ottolenghi himself.

"Salt enhances flavour, fat delivers flavour, acid balances flavour and heat determines the texture of your food. For a dish to be in perfect balance, then, all four need to work together ... the addition of Spanish chorizo or Italian ’nduja (a spreadable Calabrian salami) is pretty much a cheat’s way to make anything delicious."

It's actually the result of an exchange between the Spanish conquistadores and the Indians of Central and South America in a way. The Spanish took the pigs and they brought back the peppers. I think both sides knew about making sausages, and the Europeans were just beginning to realise that curing and smoking sausages made them last longer. I'm not sure who started smoking the peppers. Probably the Mexicans.

Chorizo is actually a pretty simple mix of diced pork and pork fat, flavoured with smoked paprika and, to a greater or lesser degree, chilli. Indeed part of its charm is that it comes in such a range of types and that you can therefore do so many things with it, from simply eating it as is to very complicated concoctions - which, I have to say, often seem to feature beans.

"you can buy it cured and sliced, as an alternative to salami to put in a sandwich. Or you can buy it raw, either sweetly garlicky or fiery hot, to be fried or grilled and scattered on a salad, added to an omelette or slow-cooked in a casserole." Harry Wallop

We're having it tonight in a stir fry of some leftover rice with whatever vegetables I have in the fridge and some tomatoes. So probably more of a paella than a stir fry. But there will be lots of herbs. Not good for you though. All that salt! All that fat!