Five Pounds of Fatback

There was only so long that I could be expected to watch the chef, sous chef, and various cooks making sausage, and tasting the results, before making it myself. In true epicure style, I went big. I sent an e-mail to 42 of my closest friends: the first six to reply could make sausage, eat sausage, and divide up the results. I had a party (expanded for extra demand) within a few hours.

My day off was Thursday, the party was Monday. I come home Sunday to an empty apartment, send out a shopping list for my guests, begin making a mis en place list, hyperventilate--five pounds of fatback?!--, pour some cava, clean the kitchen, and measure what ingredients I have. I listen to the Pretenders on Radio Paradise, which soothes the mood while measuring salt. I remember that people will need entertainment while their meat chills, and leave certain tasks for the guests. I make my shopping lists for party day and tell myself that I have enough time to sleep. I send off some last-minute e-mails, sure to be interpreted as drunken due to the hour. I write out a detailed schedule, and spill cava on my Spanish cookbook, thankfully missing Chef's copy of The Chez Panisse Café Cookbook. I write my shopping list and hope I can find cheap spices. I smirk at my naiveté. I remember that I'm making side dishes, look up the base for my collard recipe, and curse the amount of cheap sparkling wine required. I realize that I have no idea what the weight of my market-bought local collards is. I'm buying a scale in the morning, I tell myself.

I put dirty clothes in the hamper and vow to find a way to lock the messy bedroom shut. I shake out the table cloth that's been protecting the counters and ready it for the next day. I realize that it's 2:30 and the hour/cava have destroyed my ability to think cogently. I'm vaguely pleased to remember the word "cogently." I doubt my ability to wake up early enough, and pour one last glass of cava before bed. I stare at my unfinished schedule.

I wake up surprised at my lack of headache and queasiness, discouraged by the fatigue that keeps me in bed ten minutes later than I planned, fifteen minutes after I woke up. I shower, realize that I'm dehydrated--hello Cava--pack the car and hit the road.

I like to think that if the butchers at the Dekalb County Farmer's Market saw me frequently enough, they would have the sense to run. As it is, I only show up every few months, wanting fifteen pounds of london broil or five pounds of fatback. But every time it's the same sad routine: the butcher weighs all of his cut meat, which comes to roughly half of what I need. He looks at me, looks at the pounds of uncut meat on the counter, and I cheerfully proclaim that I'll wait. I've got other things on my list.

I buy. I don't get paid till tomorrow, and I've got a long list driven by guilt at sending out shopping lists so late, and unexpected needs like three kinds of wine, herbs, and ham hocks--which aren't expensive at Kroger but I was already at Whole Foods. I go to Tuesday Morning for a scale, but theirs isn't accurate enough. I go to Target. They've got one, but it's ten dollars more than I have. I trudge across the lot to the Bed Bath and Beyond, and muse on the bleak landscapes provided by big boxes, the mediocre products they deal in--neither cheap nor valuable--and the culture of consumption, the cancer in our economy that their whole business model promotes. Inside I find the scale I need for $10 cheaper than Target. I curse myself for not remembering an expired 20% off coupon and leave with six dollars to my name.

At home I find that my knives are locked inside the (closed)restaurant, and turn to my Chinese cleaver, which has attained notoriety for the time that I stored it blade-side-up and discovered, with my knuckles, that Chinese cleavers are sent from the factory sharp. Surprisingly, it works well. Not as well as My Knife, which doesn't have a stainless steel handle that gets slippery when wet or covered in a thin layer of pork fat, but well enough. I look at my list, the messy apartment, the bags of raw ingredients and the cold stove, and consider hyperventilating again. I remember what I've been told at the restaurant, when staring at an endless line of tickets: one thing at a time. And each one thing takes less time, is less messy, and somehow less monumental that I thought it would be. Suddenly, I find myself doing all the things I'd marked as "optional" on my list.

I clean, lay out butcher paper on the IKEA island and dining room table, cover the counter with a tablecloth folded so that it looks clean. My first guest, the only one who's made sausage before, arrives and hooks up his grinder attachment to my kitchenaid. He makes sausage and grinds it. We set up my manual grinder to stuff on the island. More guests arrive with cheese, crackers, and a giant bottle of wine.

Nothing throws off careful planning like guests. They eschew working in the dining room, the kitchen gets crowded. People don't know what to do or where to go, and in the middle of making and stuffing sausage, start demanding to be fed. Someone asks if we can grill some sausage now. I desperately want extra bodies out of the kitchen, but grilling requires hauling the grill through the (now-packed) apartment to the cement pad across the lot, lighting it, sitting with it while the coals burn down, and generally making sure it's not stolen. The sausage guru points out that it's way faster to poach sausage in beer. Plus there's the great bogeyman of professional cooks everywhere: the possibility that cooked food will end up in the proximity of raw. This is how food-borne illnesses make their way onto people's plates, and the specter of someone's pork being contaminated takes years off my life. I say no, but we've got cries for sausage coming from the couch, the grill is way manlier (and thus more sausage-appropriate) than beer poaching, and after an hour of being asked repeatedly, I give in. The kitchen and living room are cleared out, the grill is hauled outside and started up, and there's at least some extra room.

Someone else asks if it's OK to turn on the TV for Heroes. Sure. As could have been predicted, all activity ceases once the TV's on. At 11, the sausage guru puts my sausage in the stuffer on the kitchenaid, to show me how it works, and we finish. As soon as we finish, someone is drunk and needs to go; is it OK to get their sausage right now, and leave the grill outside? Sure. We divide the sausage, hand it out, say goodbye, and the guru and a couple of saintlike friends actually clean my kitchen for me. I sit down, open a beer, and realize my shoes were quite possibly the worst choice for a day on my feet. After a minute, the kitchen is clear enough to bring the grill back in, and I find that it was set up not on the safe concrete pad, but behind Honey's car, marked by a pile of ash. At least it's closer. I keep my friends here till 12:30, completely oblivious to the fact that they have normal jobs to wake up for.

What have I learned?

1) I need to stop calling educational evenings in which we make food "parties." They're pleasant, they involve friends, but they also take more work, and frankly, partying at these things is a bad idea.

2) Nine people do not fit into our apartment.

3) Making restaurant-quantities of sausage is best left to restaurants. There's a fine coat of grease on my kitchen floor and I suspect that to get it really clean, I'll actually have to do some hands-and-knees scrubbing.


4) My friends are not stupid, and they can mix their own recipes at home the night before. This will actually result in better sausage.


I threatened, if this went well, to hold another evening like it in a few months. I think I might, but I'll take up my friends' generous offer to use their more spacious house, I'll actually stick to my guest limit, and we'll make three batches of sausage. That's it. I figure it's better to be in demand than to satisfy everyone's half-cocked desire to make their own sausage. But my chef was impressed. That's something, right? He also demanded that I bring some in to try. Honey's out of town though, so I have to save some, and frankly, after all the effort that went into it, I'm hoarding this sausage like gold.