Merguez

Eastside Road, Healdsburg, October 3, 2009—

ONE OF THE THINGS we're particularly happy about with our farmers' market in Healdsburg is Franco Dunn, one of the founders of the legendary restaurant Santi in Geyserville (where my grandfather was born, in 1883), a man of many parts who staged at the even more legendary restaurant Il Vipore, outside of Lucca, back when it was Cesare Casella's place. (I'll have to tell you about this place one of these days: it's one of the Five Restaurants.) Franco is a master of salumi. Most weekends he's there at the Healdsburg farmers' market, selling four or five kinds of sausage out of a considerably larger repertory, cycling through them all on a schedule I will never decry.
A week ago he had Merguez: lamb sausage in a north African mood, piquant and deeply flavored. They don't really go that well with most of the other foods of this terroir and season — Healdsburg tends more to the northern shores of the Mediterranean. But we bought a package anyway, reasoning they'd come in handy.
And they did, tonight. We weren't sure we'd be eating at home, so hadn't really planned on it. But Lindsey bought the usual supply of lima beans from Nancy Skall this morning, again at the market, and we made a quick supper of them, the grilled Merguez, and the obligatory green salad. (Lunch, which I rarely mention on these pages, was also from the market: fava puré toasts, corn on the cob, and a Calville Blanc from one of our trees.)

Nero d'Avola