Loukaniko Sausage

Loukaniko is a coarse pork sausage seasoned in a way that makes it immediately identifiable: dried orange peel, fennel or coriander seed, and often a soak in red wine before it is dried or lightly smoked. Regional versions differ sharply. Pilio and the Mani are both known for theirs, Crete smokes its sausage over aromatic wood, and Cypriot loukanika are steeped in red wine until the meat stains dark.

Its best known dish is spetzofai, the Pilio stew of thickly sliced sausage cooked down with green and red peppers, onion and tomato until sticky. Loukaniko krasato braises it in red wine with bay and a strip of orange peel, playing back the sausage's own seasoning, and the simplest treatment of all is slicing it into a hot pan and cracking eggs straight into the rendered fat.

Buy it coarse-ground and orange-scented from a Greek or Cypriot deli where you can. A fennel-heavy Italian sausage is the closest common substitute, though it lacks the citrus. Cook it gently rather than hard: the fat needs time to render out and baste the meat, and a sausage fried fast over high heat splits its skin and loses the fat that was meant to stay inside it.