Wild Boar Sausage

A friend recently shot a wild boar in Central California 

and gave me several packages of sausage from it. 

I previously cooked a wild boar roast which I purchased commercially and it did not turn out well, so I was anxious to try it. At least I knew this was fresh. 

He had some red pepper added to some of the sausage and it was labeled "hot." I got a little of both kinds. For my first batch I cut up some potatoes, whole cloves of garlic, onions, carrots and small yellow, red and orange peppers and fried them in olive oil, 

then added the wild boar sausage and a liberal amount of cayenne pepper as the vegetables softened up in the pan. 

I was blown away by how good it tasted. It was some of the best meat I've ever had. 

The cayenne pepper added a little heat, the meat was a little sweet and the garlic was particularly good in the mix, but all of the vegetables took on the nice sausage flavor. My friend had recommended putting country sausage gravy on it, using a packet from the supermarket. So, for my next batch, I used sausage gravy. 

I used a similar vegetable assortment to fry up before adding the sausage, then put on some of the thick gravy. I enjoyed the gravy, but it hid some of the wonderful sausage taste and I ended up eating most of it without the gravy. 

The first two batches turned out so well, that I invited my friend up for Sunday evening dinner to try some, as well as our local missionaries. To extend it, I put in substantially more vegetables, including a whole eggplant, a bulb and its stalks of fennel, as well as the other similar vegetables. 

When Andrew had tried part of one of my earlier batches, he added some raw kale to it and it was a very nice addition. So after cooking up the mixture 

and putting it in a serving dish, I added in quite a bit of kale and stirred it up so that the kale would wilt a little bit and pick up some of the sausage taste. The result was awesome. 

Even with substantially more vegetables, the sausage flavor came through and infused its wonderful taste throughout the whole dish.