The Merguez travels North…

A couple of years after I opened Portofino in 1997, I wanted to introduce to the menu a few dishes close to my heart. One of those was the famous North African merguez sausage. A spicy lamb sausage very popular on Algerian barbecues and grills.
I asked our regular butcher at the time, the late Eric Thompson, of Lee Meat if he could produce them for the restaurant. A jovial fellow with whom I got on very well, he said he would give them a go and asked what was in them. Although I didn’t know the exact mix of herbs and spices that went into the merguez, I knew exactly what they tasted like.
So, over the next few weeks, I experimented with some combinations of flavourings in minced lamb patties. A tweak here, a tweak there until I was finally satisfied with the taste of home. But that was not the end of the problem. Eric had to produce a few small batches of merguez for me to assess the finished product.
Merguez is usually a soft sausage that contains a large proportion of fat and very little rusks. It only took three attempts to come up with the finished product.
From that day on, every other week, I provided Eric with the herb and spice mix and he produced a few kilos of what became a very popular starter, served in a spicy onion and tomato sauce with rice.
Later, I introduced the merguez to Casa del Mar, our Tapas Bar.
I passed the recipe on to Noel and Chris when the became the proud owners of Portofino and Casa respectively. They were after all the only persons who knew the ingredients as I had long forgotten the precise measures.

Nowadays, whenever I long for a bite of merguez, Noel kindly gives me a few to cook at home, especially during the lockdowns.
The tomato sauce I made is very simple. One onion finely sliced, two or three cloves of garlic, a tin of chopped tomatoes and a bunch of fresh coriander. Once I have shallow fried the sausages, I drain the fat and add the sauce to take on its flavour from the merguez.