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Today it's a simple red sauce on linguine with - arguably - some of the best Calabrian pepper salsicca sausage in the country: Fiama from Salume Beddu up in the city.
I deeply miss the sausage monger of my childhood, Sonny D'Angelo. I have no idea whether he is still alive, but the dude made the best sausages I've ever had, his wild boar and ligonberry sausage was fucking fantastic.
He was also a notably pissed off and ornery individual, the sort of person that got pissed off if he had customers. If you ever tried to pay with card, he would go into a tirade about how much the processing companies take in merchant fees. In retrospect, he extremely based.
Regardless, he made by far and away the best sausage in Philly.
I once saw Marc Vetri in his shop, and Marc Vetri is a man who is generally considered to be the best of the serious Philadelphia Chef/Restaurateurs, like, he is kind of a big deal, and Sonny D'Angelo is just tearing into the guy as he buys his sausage, once again, over credit card processing fees. And I am not sure if Sonny D'Angelo doesn't know who he is talking to, or whether he simply doesn't give a fuck.
Regardless, Vetri takes the verbal abuse with a sheepish smile. The sausage was just that good.
Unfortunately, Sonny shutdown maybe 10 years ago. Dude was a shit businessman, obviously.
But he was the singular greatest sausage-monger I have ever seen.
I wouldn't exactly call it a sauce, but my favorite method of preparing most shapes of pasta (with the exceptions of long cylindrical shapes, like spaghetti), is mostly to boil the pasta for two-three minutes less than the packaging suggests, before removing the pasta from the boiling water, and rinsing it well under cold water, before putting it into a pan, along with a good nob of the most expensive butter you can buy, cracking fresh pepper over it, and salting it to taste. A touch or the retained starchy water you boiled the past in helps to bring it all together.
I really think high quality butter with salt and pepper outshines most pasta sauces, unless you have an Italian Grandmother who is will to spend eight hours simmering a Sunday marinara.
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