cooking FOR fun
WITH SAM BOZZO
Sausage Making with the Delorenzo Family
O
n a beautiful and crisp early January morning
Larry Mickartz and I made our way to the outskirts
of Hollister. We arrived at the Antonio Filice Ranch
for sausage making, an annual tradition of the
Filice-Delorenzo family. Don and Gary Delorenzo along with
sister, Emily Paige, are the family elders. Three generations of
family members and their significant others, aged 2 to 72, are
the sausage and salami makers. We were joyfully greeted and
what a blast it was.
While it was an all-day affair, it wasn't just sausage making.
Late morning there was a breakfast with pork chops, fried
potatoes and eggs. There were the periodic shots throughout
the day. Later in the afternoon, after all the sausages were
stuffed, there was an early dinner of Calabrese pasta sauce and
meatballs. This day there were thirty in attendance and all were
involved. The sausage making was done in an old farm shed
which has been the sausage house since the early 1900’s. A
few years ago, it was remodeled but all the legible notes on the
walls were rewritten on the new walls. Each set of annual wall
notes document who was there, how many pounds and what
types of sausage were made, and how much each family took
home. We were honored to be included in the 2018 notes.
Back in the early days this was a multi-day event starting
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with the slaughtering of the pig. All parts of the porker were
used or shared, and they had a saying, “cook everything but
the oink.” This year they started with 360 pounds of pork,
which was trimmed, cut up and ground. Meanwhile in a near-
by outdoor kitchen a breakfast of fried potatoes, pork chops
and scrambled eggs was prepared. In the house kitchen, sister-
in-law Barbara Delorenzo and Emily Paige began the process of
making the sauce and the soup for the late afternoon meal that
included chicken soup with pork meatballs and bucatini pasta
mixed with the traditional Calabrese red sauce.
Over in the sausage shed, the 360 pounds of pork was
being cut and turned into ground pork. It was then placed
in a large wooden trough that has been in the family from
almost the beginning of the sausage making. A computer was
used to calculate the amount of spices needed for each type
of sausage. Spices were added progressively as the different
types of sausages were stuffed. Portions were carefully weighed
on an ancient scale. Around 8:30 am the first shot of whiskey
was distributed to the of-age family members and, in unison, a
salutation was made. The process of mixing in the spices was
done manually and generally left up to the young bucks. The
mixing process was repeated throughout the sausage making
process as different sausage's mixtures of spices were fed into
JUNE/JULY 2018
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