Meat & Potatoes. I promised a week of Meat & Potatoes. 6 recipes in 6 days. That's a week in my book. So this is the last of these recipes.

My meat is sausage. Spicy Italian sausage. My potatoes are potatoes. Is that clear enough?

If not I should also say this is a recipe for flatbread. Meat & Potato Flat Bread with Mustard Greens. I added the mustard greens because spring has begun to sprung here in So. Cal and the hills are alive! Every spring the first things to come alive in the hills near my house are wild mustard plants. That means urban foraging to me.

I live in the Hollywood Hills. My street backs up to some L.A. County conservancy property, which bleeds into Lake Hollywood and the land owned by Department of Water and Power, and culminates in 4200 acres of Griffith Park. That is a lot of wild land in the middle of one of the largest cities in the world.

As I said, winter rain makes spring come early in California. Julie Andrews has nothin’ on these hills, because they really are “alive” right now. That means the tasty young leaves of wild mustard are everywhere. So I was out bright and early today gathering a big bag of mustard greens. Naturally I just had to use them within hours of picking them. So they make an appearance here in the last of my Meat & Potato posts. Meat & Potato Flat Bread with Mustard Greens serves 8 CLICK here for a printable recipe.

I have a little story. Oh don’t look at me like that! You’ll like this story. It has a happy ending. I promise it’s about food too. Okay, I also promise it's brief. Now will you keep reading?

I have this friend (‘cuz this could never happen to me). He was in the middle of preparing a special dish. Let’s say it was Salmon Tartare inspired by his buddy Dash of Stash (who is coincidentally a buddy of mine as well). And for the sake of this story let’s say he’d gotten to a certain place in the preparation of this dish. He came across that moment. You know the moment I am talking about. We have all been there.

He had spent a considerable amount of time, energy, a pretty penny getting to this moment. As he leaned over his concoction of sweet salmon beautiness, the hills and crystal blue sky in view outside his kitchen window (okay, I am editorializing here somewhat). He took in the deeply savory aroma of his creation and he put a spoonful into his mouth. This is the moment of “taste”.

But something was wrong. You could see that by the look on his face. But he is an experienced cook. He knew this was no big deal. So he did not panic. This is why the phrase “season to taste” was invented. It’s that last shining moment when the cook gets to tweak his culinary baby into its peak performance.

He began to reach for the salt, because surely “season to taste” means salt and possibly pepper. Right?