Bucatini with Sausage

Name: Bucatini with Sausage
Yield: makes about 7 cups, enough for 2 pounds of bucatini or other pasta, serving 12
Ingredients: 1 1/2 pounds sweet Italian sausage (preferably without fennel seeds); 1 cup white wine; 3/4 cup whole Tuscan-style pickled peperoncini, drained (about 24 small peppers); 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for serving; 6 plump garlic cloves, peeled and sliced; 1 teaspoon kosher salt; 6 cups (two 28-ounce cans) canned Italian plum tomatoes, preferably San Marzano, crushed by hand; 1 pound bucatini (or perciatelli or thick spaghetti); 1/2 cup freshly grated pecorino (or half pecorino and half Grana Padano or Parmigiano-Reggiano), plus more for passing; A heavy-bottomed, high-sided skillet or sauté pan, 14-inch diameter; a large pot for cooking the pasta

December 9, 2011

This recipe makes a wonderful tomato-and-sausage sauce for pasta. Typical of Basilicata, it is uncomplicated yet yields a complex and delicious flavor. It is important to use the best sausage, preferably a mix freshly made by a real Italian butcher. If there’s one available to you, ask for sweet, all-pork sausage, preferably a medium grind of meat with some texture, rather than a fine grind, which tends to be pasty. To save work, since you want the meat to be loose, ask for the sausage mix before it is put in the casing. As for the pasta, I recommend bucatini, which is what I first had in Basilicata. But I like spaghetti with this, too—a whole-wheat spaghetti would be especially nice.

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