Secret Italian recipe yields famous sausage in Machias

MACHIAS, Maine — Joe Parisi keeps secrets.

Step into his Machias home, pass through the breezeway — where imported Italian groceries are displayed floor to ceiling — walk through the kitchen — where a bottle of red wine is always on the table — and head down into the basement.

There, built into a corner with a single high window, among knives and grinders and stainless steel tables, is where the secrets are kept. The immaculate prep room is a sausage factory where 89-year-old Parisi handmakes six different kinds of sausage.

Grinding the high-quality pork butts isn’t the secret. Neither is the funneling of the meat into the natural casings, or the refrigerators full of garlic cloves and huge wheels of cheese.

Ahhhhh — of course — the secret is the spice combination. It’s a recipe Parisi’s father brought from the village of Vita, near Palermo, Italy, when he came to America more than 100 years ago. The combination could include salt, any one of three kinds of pepper, fennel, or sage, but Parisi isn’t about to share.

Now, customers line up daily at Parisi’s back door to buy his handmade sausage, authentic Italian pasta and ingredients, as well as imported cheeses, local breads, hand-mixed and marinated olives, and a wide variety of other meats.

Parisi is a bantam -sized man with a quick wit, a face-encompassing smile and eyes that twinkle.

He may walk slowly and his hands may be gnarled with decades of overuse, but no one should mistake his demeanor for weakness. He carries totes full of meat up and down the stairs, rolls barrels of wine by himself, and keeps up with a three-quarter-acre garden in his backyard.

The art of sausage making is labor intensive and time consuming. It also can be secretive.

“My father brought the sausage recipes with him from Italy, but he just made it for the family,” Parisi said as he began to make sweet sausage early one morning.

“But you have to go now,” he told two visitors as he prepared to weigh and measure his spice combination. “I don’t mean to be rude, but the recipe is none of your business.”

That frankness is the New Jersey coming out in Parisi. He was born and raised on a 275-acre vegetable farm in Vineland. In 1943, Parisi enlisted in the U.S. Navy, serving on the USS Ingraham .

“I served in the South Pacific and on May 3, 1945, we were hit by kamikazes,” Parisi said. “Fifteen killed, 30 wounded.

Venison Sausage and Biscuit Pinwheels

Ready for just about the easiest — and yummiest — appetizer (or breakfast) recipe in the world? Like many good recipes, this one was born out of a combined need to use up some venison breakfast sausage and find an appetizer to bring to a Memorial Day party. I wanted an appetizer that would be easy to grab and go, knowing people would be milling about.

I think sausage and biscuits are one of the greatest combinations on Earth, so an idea was born. Venison sausage and biscuit pinwheels. Okay, I’ve had these things at parties before, so it wasn’t an original idea. But it was a tasty one, well worth repeating here! And so easy! All you need is about 1/2 pound of venison breakfast sausage (recipe below) and 1 container of ready made biscuit dough (you can make the dough if you want; I’m just too lazy to do that).

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