South Tyrolean artist Paul Thuil: let it be sausage

It will be sausage

By STEPHAN LÖWENSTEIN, photos by FRANZISKA GILLI

December 20, 2022 For the South Tyrolean artist Paul Thuile, making sausages has become a fixed ritual with friends and family.

We visited him in his kitchen.

With a generously cupped hand, Paul Thuile reaches into the casserole with freshly minced and seasoned meat.

He guides what he has taken to his nose, sniffs appreciatively, shapes it into a flat loaf and frys it in the pan without any other ingredients.

This is the sample donut.

This is how you can determine whether the seasoning is right or whether something of this or that needs to be added.

Because the rest of the meat is to be turned into sausage.

And once it's in the shell, of course, then nothing can be changed.

Thuile is not a butcher.

He is - yes, what actually?

Diploma in computer science.

Graduated from the Vienna Art Academy.

Mathematics teacher in Bolzano for ten years.

A founding member of the South Tyrolean University, so to speak, and a lecturer at the Faculty of Art and Design for a quarter of a century.

"Drawing teacher," he says simply.

Drawing is probably his main activity.

He draws with a neatly shaky line on pieces of paper, sheets, canvases, walls and any other surface that comes to mind.

Paul Thuile, who has had many people to make sausages in his kitchen, often finds that the guests start talking.

Which brings him to the nice conclusion: "Everyone has their own sausage biography."

But even the broad word "artist" seems almost too narrow.

Thuile has curated exhibitions, such as the Tyrolean State Exhibition in the Andreas Hofer Year 2009 and one on the history of horticulture in South Tyrol.

Using a chainsaw, he uses fruit trees from his garden that he cut down decades ago to make kitchen boards: too bulky to be called “little boards”, but quite useful, because they are firmly in place under their own weight.

On one he has just parried and divided meat with a finely ground blade.

He tinkers lights out of flashlights, hunting trophies or espresso pots.

All this is not l'art pour l'art.

The boards are (literally) branded for sale and the loo, slightly devastated after a burst pipe, has advertising leaflets for the Hubertus lamp.

Thuile builds armchairs from materials such as wire and dried corn leaves.

However, they are more original than comfortable.

He dismisses the objection reprovingly: “They are not for the meat.” He also keeps a bunch of chickens: Sulmtaler that lay very small eggs with the nice additional designation “Kaiserhuhn”.

He also grew and expanded wine.

In the hallway between all sorts of stuff (there's all sorts of stuff everywhere) there is a battery of jams, which the manufacturer has inscribed with mysterious codes ("if I write the year on them, everyone will notice if they are ancient").

They give us an apricot and a cassis.

Both delicious, pure and pure.

Most recently, he wrote a book about making sausages in your own kitchen (“Pauls Wurstfibel”, Edition Raethia, Bolzano 2022).

That is why we are now in the kitchen of the Rosengartenhof in Gargazzone, halfway between Bolzano and Merano, where Thuiles have lived for generations.

His son lives here with Paul Thuile, who works as a farmer and is just rattling by outside with the tractor;

the daughter ended up in Linz.

Partner Nora could be roaming through woods and fields to hunt down raw materials for wild sausages.

But now there are pieces of pork and beef.

A marble slab is set into the heavy kitchen table, perfectly suited to the purpose to which we have dedicated ourselves.

Meat is parried and divided with a finely ground blade

Through the meat grinder

The fried test donut shows whether the seasoning mix is ​​right for the sausages – before they take on shape in the casing.

Everyone has most of what you need in the kitchen: sharp knives and scissors, bowls and bowls, a pepper mill, a scale.

Only the meat grinder is special, you need it for chopping and stuffing.

There are solid examples with a crank that don't cost the earth.

With them you get the desired result, at the same time you save yourself a visit to the gym;

you will not want to prepare many large barbecue parties with it.

If you have a powerful food processor, you can get an attachment for grinding.

Thuile has a more ambitious wolf with its own powerful electric motor, which can be controlled by a pedal.

But he is not an ideologue, his book also contains instructions on how to make sausages without a grinder or scales, after all you can also have the butcher mince it – i.e. have it put through a meat grinder.

How does a computer scientist, draftsman and design lecturer come to the sausage?

through childhood.

The family on the father's side farmed and was one of the first here to grow fruit.

The mother brought an inn into the marriage.

Sausage was made every Saturday, which was then served throughout the week.

It is no coincidence that the test donut is at the beginning of this story.

For Thuile it is the most wonderful childhood memory: as a boy he would be in the kitchen on Saturdays, fork at foot, so he wouldn't miss the moment when the freshly seared meat was lifted out of the pan to be tasted.

Of course we get a taste now.

Sausages are regularly made at Thuile's with friends, acquaintances and the children.

“It is an impressive ritual for everyone: touching the meat, cutting the meat, seasoning, tasting, smelling.

It appeals to all senses.

An archaic experience.” When the companion brings game back from the hunt, it is Paul who does the “red work”, breaking up and destroying.

For him, this is also a teaching program: he knows the individual parts of meat and what they are good for.

“Then there is a whole portion of ambition.

I want to impress

it's show

It's a performance.

Even cooking for ten people is a challenge.

And I like that.” Last but not least, there is the joy of enjoyment, the curiosity about taste experiences, in short in Tyrolean: “the G'luscht”.

The meat should be five degrees, the fat pork belly better zero degrees.

Otherwise the minced meat gets slightly greasy, and it should also be more hygienic.

Thuile even pre-cooled the iron wolf.

He prepared the garlic, which he coarsely chopped and put into a glass of strong red wine a few days ago.

He doesn't usually need a lot of spices for his homemade sausage: salt and freshly ground pepper.

If you want, you can make it your own, whether with nutmeg or chili, herbs or lemon peel, potatoes, pumpkin or cheese.

But Thuile wants the sausage to taste like the meat that's inside, rather than an overpowering mix of spices.

And that, as he is basically saying, should be the best meat you can get.

Of course, this does not mean that massaged Japanese beef fillet goes into the sausage, but that the animals were kept in a species-appropriate manner and not produced industrially.

Especially the less noble parts are better suited.

For us he has a piece of pork shoulder, a smaller piece of fat belly and a marbled piece of beef from the rump.

Thuile also has an anecdote about this.

On Sundays, the clergy were guests in the parental home, sometimes even the bishop.

They got sausages from the noble pieces (not without reason a certain roast beef is called the “Pfaffenstück”).

The usual sausage was called the "Schubelwurst", that's where the cuts and fat parts came in.

Of course, the father sat with the guests of honor – but wisely managed to get hold of the Schubelwurst from time to time in the kitchen.

Because it actually tasted better.

That is why the topic of Thuile's primer is by no means old-fashioned.

On the contrary: If you kill an animal in order to eat it, you shouldn't just take the "tasty bits" from it, but everything.

And he doesn't want to encourage people to eat a lot of meat, says the author.

"My call is rather: People, become a hunter.

Seeks meat from well-behaved animals.

The more asking for this meat, the more producers will be willing to offer it.

You have to spend more money on it, that's clear.” If the book still has an unfashionable touch, from the typewriter type to the lack of the Ikea familiarity, then that's only refreshing.

Outside, the rooster interrupts its owner with a crowing.

Thuile's becoming a chicken keeper wasn't the result of a plan, but the result of an art installation.

The motto of the Hofer year was “freedom”.

Politically, one had probably imagined something heroic, the location of the exhibition was the gloomy Fortezza.

Thuile, however, procured the chickens of an almost extinct breed and kept them free-range between them.

Later he just kept her.

Thuile boldly massages salt and pepper into the cold meat, which has been cut into pieces.

Then he lets the pieces through the wolf.

A snail presses them against a perforated disc in front of which they are chopped up with a whirling knife.

The smaller the holes, the finer the hack.

Thuile has used the six-millimeter disc, which gives a coarse roast.

As an example, a small amount is also let through the four-pane.

Same meat, same seasoning, but actually it will taste a bit different afterwards.

Even the color is different, more pale pink.

Incidentally, it is not advisable to use the finer disc right away, especially if the worm is not turned by a powerful motor.

Salt and pepper have already been mixed in with the mincing, now Thuile adds his buttoned red wine.

He catches the toes himself, that would be too intense for him again.

In fact, the essence alone has a distinct aroma.

It is mixed and mixed again.

The rehearsal turns out satisfactorily, so it's time to brag.

Paul Thuile also keeps a flock of chickens: Sulmtalers that lay very small eggs.

Not everyone says what the casing of a sausage is made of like the Berlin currywurst stand operators do: "With casing or without casing?" Some people may put off the concrete idea, after all, the casing is also found in pigs or sheep to what it is there for.

But it is also the ideal material for giving the chopped meat a new and culinary form.

We don't even want to ignore industrial sausage casings here.

Especially since the home sausage maker of today still benefits from the division of labor in the modern world.

On the day of the slaughter he no longer has to water the intestines for hours, turn them inside out, scrape them off and wash them again, as was once the job of the innkeeper's daughter.

She later told her son about the wet, the cold, the smell: for her, looking back at making sausages was less romantic.

I too have my own memories of this.

In the home village there was once a butcher who carried out house slaughtering.

His name was Glove, which I remember because my imagination, quite unfairly, allowed itself to imagine that the name must come from the fact that the item of clothing in question had once gotten lost in the sausage meat.

In any case, the neighbor's sow was once stabbed, hung up on the front loader and singed.

I was instructed to stir the bucket underneath to keep the blood from clotting.

Today I am convinced that it was more a test of how the boy would react.

Well, it certainly didn't take away my joy from the sausage, on the contrary.

Thuile, who has had many people to make sausages in his kitchen, often finds that the guests start talking.

Which brings him to the wonderful realization:

Today, regulations hardly make home slaughter possible, even for people who have a house, yard, kitchen and cold store.

So you get the intestines, nicely cleaned and preserved in brine, from your trusted butcher.

From pork for thick sausages, from sheep for thin ones.

You can flush this hose again at home, which is not difficult: put the end over the tap and let the water flow.

It is essential that the intestines remain wet.

Otherwise it quickly becomes parchment and cracks.

Finger food: Thuile ties the sausages with kitchen twine.

Now the meat grinder is converted.

Remove the perforated disc and knife, attach the filling spout and grease it, for example with parures.

Slide the casing, cut into arm-length pieces, onto the nozzle until only a few inches are slack.

Quickly re-wet the case, keeping a bowl of water with you the whole time.

Now put the sausage meat back in with one hand, the snail presses it into the casing, which is gently pulled away with the other hand.

Caution!

Do not fill too quickly, otherwise the intestines will burst.

And not too slowly, otherwise air bubbles will form.

This shows the value of the pedal.

If you don't have that, it's better to get two people to work, especially if you have to crank.

Soon three fat snails are lying in front of us on the marble slab.

Now just separate the individual sausages.

To do this, the sausage meat is carefully pushed to the side at the intended point.

You could turn them off, first in one direction, then the other.

Thuile does it differently, he ties his sausages with kitchen twine, always two knots next to each other, then you can cut them easier without risking one end opening.

In addition, different recipes or types can be marked with colored yarn.

In "Paul's Sausage Guide" there are also suggestions for wild, chicken, lamb and veal sausages, as well as Italian fennel salsiccia, salami and terrines.

For the inn, Mother Thuile had to be meticulous about making sure that all the sausages were the same size.

Otherwise a guest might complain, saying he didn't get enough.

The son makes them extra different.

After all, one person is more hungry, the other perhaps less.

Incidentally, no matter how carefully he weighed salt and pepper, it is difficult to imagine Paul Thuile using a ruler, despite his past as a mathematics teacher.

A sample is cooked in a water bath and served with polenta.

Already it can be prepared, the sausage.

Unless you want to keep them.

This can be done in the freezer, or you can go to the higher school of smoking and air drying.

We have tactically arranged to meet Thuile so that it is the right time for a snack.

You could roast or grill, but the sample is cooked in a water bath, which is kept at 80 degrees with the help of a needle thermometer.

Thuile prepares a polenta for this.

He got the corn semolina from friends who grind it themselves.

Water, butter, a little salt, stirring for half an hour - that's all it takes to have a wonderfully creamy porridge that underpins the strong, juicy taste of meat.

Accompanied by a glass of red wine.

Is he from here?

No, from the lowlands.

That's a fine distinction, because what is meant is South Tyrol, but south of Bozen.

When Thuile casually mentions that he went “to Italy” for some reason, we can't help but ask him a second time what he actually is.

This time in a different sense: is he Italian, as the passport says?

German because of language and ethnic group?

South Tyrolean?

Tyrolean, Austrian?

Oberländer?

Thuile has to fit: "Now you caught me."

It's probably the best answer to a question that wants a box for something that's far too bulky for it.

So let's go back to the sausage.

We have learned that their essence should also be that there is something different in it that combines into a harmonious whole, but not into a uniform taste.

And without too many ingredients making the individual ones disappear.

Fashion of the Swiss Alps Swiss Air

Gold diggers in the USA In Gold We Trust