gmhTODAY 20 gmhToday June July 2018 | Page 112

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 112 GILROY • MORGAN HILL • SAN MARTIN 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 gmhtoday.com