Black Pudding (Scottish, Italian, Spanish)

 It's amazing what you find when cleaning out a cupboard! I recently did some tidying and found an unopened box in my dry store cupboard. To my surprise it was a bag of dried pig blood Id ordered a long time ago and had forgotten to use. Although well out of date, it was stored dry and cool and was still perfect so I started going through my old recipes. Although I'm primarily vegetarian now, it's through circumstance rather than ethical choice. Anyway, I came up with this recipe influenced by Scottish, Italian and Spanish variations of blood sausage but without added fat.

It's effortless to make and dried pig's blood is available online if you fancy giving it a try.

Ingredients

50 g dried Pig blood

250 g rice (cooked and cooled)

200 g porridge oats

1 small onion grated or finely chopped

350 ml water

1 tsp salt

1 tsp smoked paprika

1 tsp coarse black pepper

1 tsp chilli powder (optional)

Method

• Put all dry ingredients in a mixing bowl, stir then add water. 
• Stir or mix well to combine.
• Allow to sit for 30 minutes in the refrigerator.
• Preheat oven to 180c or gas mark 5.
• Lightly oil a loaf tin then put mixture in and level it with a few taps on the worksurface. 
• Cover with tinfoil and bake for an hour.
• Remove from oven then leave still covered with foil till cool.
• Turn out of the tin and refrigerate.
• Slice, fry and enjoy!