Polenta, redsauce

Eastside Road, Healdsburg, October 13, 2009—

I FIND EIGHTEEN earlier references to red sauce on this blog, dating back a year and a half — roughly one a month, I guess: time to accord this one of the Hundred Plates. Today we had our first serious rain in months, and it was serious, four and a half inches at our house, with heavy winds from time to time: perfect polenta and red sauce weather. But summer lingers, so we began with sliced fresh tomatoes, with the last of the peppers Lindsey à la Greque'd the other day. (If I try to describe Lindsey's way of making tomato sauce I'll probably get it wrong: anyway, I already have described it, here).
Afterward, a very delicious Crane melon, bought at the Crane melon barn, near the Crane ranch, on Crane Canyon Road. My mother was a Crane; my grandfather's grandfather and his two brothers settled that ranch, a century and a half ago. Crane melons are nearly always good, but those from the Crane ranch are the best. The best melon of any kind at all, say I, except perhaps for a perfect Cavaillon or, better, Charentais: but you can only get them, at their best, in France.

Nero d'Avola