Sage advice for autumn

I received an email from Peony Moss asking for advice on what to do with a bumber crop of sage, so I will make sage the feature of the week. It is an appropriate time to think about sage, since sage is one of those flavors that is naturally autumnal. You see, the Bay Area has about 2 weeks of spring around February, then back to autumn, a week of summer in April, winter from May to August, with a few absurdly warm summer days thrown in for good measure (keeps us neurotic), then our summer starts on Labor Day and lasts until about mid-October, then we begin autumn, which lasts until February, so we get a lot of practice in this autumn business.

Sage is one of those great herbs that just hollers "home." Even for people who grew up on TV dinners, deep down, their inner gourmet demands sage. One whiff and they will wax nostalgic for the childhood cuisine they never had.

My cousin Rita (my grandmother's first cousin, you do the figuring out of the exact term, we are lazy wops, so we just use cugina), who is my only serious rival as the Cook of the extended family (I am arbitrarily kicking Mario out of the running because he married into the family and is a Napolitanese, so it is a different cooking tradition, and you cannot compare apples to oranges, but he is a fine cook, who I would defer to in any but the most Tuscan purist situation) says that you cannot buy sage. Bought sage will not last. You must be given sage. We bought our sage and it is doing fine, and tastes great, but Rita is the better cook, so maybe she is on to something.

This email mentioned that she cannot get unbrined pork at her local markets. We found that situation one time when we happened to be at the local Satanway market and thought, "hey, some pork would be nice tonight." All they had was this garbage in brine. There are valid uses for brining, but unless I made the brine, or Alice Waters or Paul Bertolli did, there had better be some explaining to do. Lousy, overly lean pork needs brining, good pork benefits from it in specific situations. Markets that only sell brined pork are an abomination, and we should pray that they go out of business so that honest merchants can take their places.

We must cultivate the taste for good pork, as it is one of our front line weapons against Mohammedanism, but that is a different topic, and Ryan might read this and accuse me of ranting and then not come over Friday with his new knife to help me prep for Steve's party and then where will I be?

Sorry. I try not to do too many inside jokes, but some people need the occasional barb thrown their way, and Ryan is one of those. He is a smart fellow with great knife skills who is doing some silly thinking these days regarding Petrine Primacy, although he should know better. But we will discuss this over gin on Friday, and he will see the light, eventually (in spite of my ranting), so there!

Anyway, the situation with regard to mass market pork is terrible, and I recommended to Peony that she contact my neighbors at Niman Ranch. In the old days the great meat was Bird and Schell, then Niman-Schell, then Orville Schell went back to academia and Bill Niman is the undisputed king of tasty, honest pork and beef. His headquarters are walking distance from our house, so the local taqueria uses Niman Ranch organic pork for their carnitas. I might gripe about East Oakland once in awhile (like when my car was stolen), but it has its advantages!

So, the very first thing to know about sage is that you can rub it on your teeth and it freshens your breath. Or chop it finely and mix it with baking soda and brush with it. It lacks flouride, so I would not use it exclusively, but it whitens and freshens.

You can also fry the leaves in extra virgin olive oil and serve them on an antipasto plate. Yummm! Especially in the autumn, the glorious autumn.

If you haven't guessed, I have been eating figs and melon and vine-ripened organic heirloom tomatoes and am especially happy that the season is where it is right now.