Sausage, polenta, greens

Portland, September 11, 2010—

YEARS AGO WHEN WE LIVED in a one-bedroom-plus-basement duplex in Berkeley, with three kids, our neighbors — whom we rarely dealt with — lived in a house on the corner distinguished by two things: it was full, as far as we could tell by looking through the windows, of empty cardboard boxes; and it was surrounded, as we knew all too well from daily direct observance, by plantings — intentional or volunteer — of borage.

I've never really cottoned to the idea of borage, and the (fairly) recent movie Borat (which, for the record, I thought very funny) has not elevated this coarse, unsought, unkempt green in my opinion. But tonight, for perhaps the first time in my life, it was on my dinner plate.

It grows in my daughter's back yard, apparently, along with collard greens. Also on the menu was — you'd never guess — sausage: a couple of the last of the mangalitsa, and a couple of Franco's Toulouse-style. Also a good-sized platter of polenta. There were a dozen sausages or so, but by the end of the meal the platter looked like this:

Afterward, green salad, and sliced tomatoes.

Cheap Nero d'Avola
rough video of some of tonight's kitchen prep here