Italian Sausage with Polenta — A Thursday Warmth When the Peas Run Out

The kitchen is the room I live in. The other rooms are storage for memories — the dining room with its china cabinet, the living room with Paul's shipwreck books, the upstairs bedrooms where the kids grew up and which I have not entered (except to dust) in years. The kitchen is where the present happens. The kitchen is where the food is made and the dog is fed and the morning begins and the evening ends. The kitchen is the entire territory of my daily life now, and I find that this is enough. Karin and I talked Sunday. Stockholm in winter is dark. Duluth in winter is dark. We compared darknesses. We laughed. Karin said: "Linda, do you remember the time Pappa drove us to Two Harbors in a blizzard because Mamma wanted lutefisk?" I said yes. The story unspooled across the phone for twenty minutes. I had forgotten half of it. Karin remembered all of it. The memory was, briefly, complete between us. Mamma's hands shake more than they did last month. I do not point it out. I notice. I notice everything. The shake is small — barely visible when she is at rest, more visible when she lifts her coffee cup, most visible when she is trying to thread a needle. She still threads needles. She still bakes. She still calls me on Tuesdays at 10. The hands shake. The shaking does not stop the doing. The doing is what Mamma is. I cooked Pea soup (Thursday tradition) this week. Yellow split peas, ham hock, onion, carrot, salt and pepper, simmered three hours. Served with mustard and rye bread. The Swedish Thursday meal. I make it most Thursdays from October through April. Mamma made it every Thursday of her life, no exceptions. The Damiano Center: a regular named Marlene, who has been coming for twelve years, told me her granddaughter just had a baby. She was glowing. She had a photo on her phone. The phone was old and cracked but the photo was clear: a small pink baby in a hospital blanket. Marlene said: "I am a great-grandmother now. The same as you." I said: "Welcome to the club." We hugged. The line continues, even on the hard side of the soup line. Mamma's bread pans are on the shelf where they have always been. I used the smaller one this week. The metal has worn smooth in the places her hands touched it for sixty years. The pan is, in some real sense, a sculpture of Mamma's hands. I knead the bread in the bowl Mamma used. I shape it on the counter Mamma stood at (well, mine, but identical to hers — same Formica color, same dimensions). I bake it in the pan Mamma baked in. The kitchen is the relay. The relay continues. It is enough. It has to be. And on a morning like this, with the lake doing what the lake does and the dog at my feet and the bread on the counter and the kitchen warm enough to live in, it is. I have been blogging for years now. The blog began as something to do at night when sleep would not come. The blog has become — without my fully intending it — a small congregation. The readers come back. They read the recipes. They read the parts that are not recipes. They write to me sometimes. They tell me what they cooked. They tell me about their own kitchens, their own losses, their own continued cooking. The congregation is its own form of company. It is enough.

The split peas were gone by Friday, and Thursday came around again the following week the way it always does — quietly, without ceremony, expecting to be fed. I did not have a ham hock. I had sausage and cornmeal and a cold evening coming in off the lake, and that turned out to be exactly enough. This Italian sausage with polenta is not Mamma’s ärtsoppa, but it is warm and it is made by hand and it fills the kitchen with the kind of smell that means someone is home — and on a Thursday in November, that is the whole point.

Italian Sausage with Polenta

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 35 min | Total Time: 50 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 1 lb mild or sweet Italian sausage, casings removed
• 1 cup coarse-ground polenta (yellow cornmeal)
• 4 cups low-sodium chicken broth, divided
• 1 cup water
• 1 medium yellow onion, diced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes, with juices
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon dried Italian seasoning
• 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
• Salt and black pepper to taste
• Fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped, for serving

Instructions

1. Start the polenta. In a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan, bring 3 cups of the chicken broth and the water to a boil over medium-high heat. Gradually whisk in the polenta in a slow, steady stream. Reduce heat to low and cook, stirring frequently with a wooden spoon, for 25–30 minutes until thick and creamy. Add splashes of the remaining broth as needed to keep it loose.
2. Brown the sausage. While the polenta cooks, heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the sausage and cook, breaking it into pieces with a spoon, for 6–8 minutes until browned and cooked through. Transfer to a plate, leaving the drippings in the pan.
3. Build the sauce. Reduce heat to medium. Add the diced onion to the skillet and cook 4–5 minutes until softened. Add the garlic and cook 1 minute more. Stir in the diced tomatoes (with their juices), Italian seasoning, and red pepper flakes if using. Return the sausage to the pan, season with salt and pepper, and simmer 8–10 minutes until the sauce has thickened slightly.
4. Finish the polenta. Remove from heat and stir in the butter and Parmesan. Taste and adjust salt. The polenta should be creamy and just pourable — loosen with a splash of warm broth if it has seized up.
5. Serve. Spoon polenta into wide shallow bowls. Ladle the sausage and tomato mixture over the top. Scatter parsley over each bowl and pass extra Parmesan at the table.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 520 | Protein: 24g | Fat: 28g | Carbs: 42g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 970mg