Sausage

Eastside Road, August 16, 2010 —

I WROTE HERE last year about Franco Dunn, who makes fabulous sausage, and converses about it knowledgeably and enthusiastically, bringing up names and places we're equally reminiscent about — Pig by the Tail and Victoria Wise (whose most recent book I'm going to have to get); Il Vipore and Cesare Casella. We eat sausage fairly often, as you'll have noticed; perhaps without Franco we'd eat it less frequently. Anyhow tonight we had a couple of his Toscanas.

How to explain the goodness of these products? They're, well, savory, the spices and herbs perfectly balanced and pointed, the ratio of fat to flesh beautifully calculated. Lindsey pokes them with a fork and broils them in the oven (since I'm too lazy or preoccupied to build a fire outside and supervise the cooking myself). With them tonight, more of those fabulous Padron peppers, and jasmine rice flavored with the olive oil from the peppers and the tortilla I cooked a while back. Green salad after, of course, and nectarines, and pluots…

Rouge du pays de l'Hérault, Moulin de Gassac, "Guilhem", 2008