Sausage (again)

Eastside Road, Healdsburg, June 24, 2010—

WHEN I WAS A KID we had sausage fairly often. It was almost always what I think of as "loose sausage", uncased, either store-bought or made at home from our own pigs. (Or perhaps it was made by the meat-processing plant Dad occasionally took our butchered pigs to, when he didn't have time or inclination to do the work himself.) I remember liking it, and looking forward to it: but in retrospect it probably wasn't anything special.

Back in the 1970s we bought sausage in Berkeley at Victoria Wise's wonderful charcuterie Pig By The Tail. (Our daughter Giovanna worked there a year or two, as a teenager.) I particularly remember her delicious rillettes and crepinettes, and her Touraine-style sausage was indispensable when it came time to make cassoulet. Alas, Pig didn't last, but Victoria wrote a fine book, American Charcuterie, and we've made those sausages at home more than once for our own cassoulets.

We're lucky here in Healdsburg to have Franco Dunn, who I wrote about here last October, as I mentioned a week or so ago. Franco apprenticed in Italy for a number of months, as I understand it, and is serious about his work, though relaxed and accessible in person at the Healdsburg Farmers Market where you can buy his sausage. (Also at the Santa Rosa Farmers Market, I've heard: see a photo here.) 

Today, after yet another day working outside in the front yard — which covers about a small city block — we didn't feel like cooking. Hell: we didn't even feel like shopping. Lindsey remembered there were two of Franco's sausages left in the freezer for just such an emergency, and she cooked them on the stove in a small enamel pan, pouring off the fat as it oozed out from the pinholes she'd provided. She also remembered her mother's steamed potatoes with vinaigrette, which made a nice side dish. Green salad, naturally.

Côte Varois, red, "La Ferme Julien"