Sausages and Salsa Shakti

Salsa Shakti ought to be called Salsa Negra because The Great Plotnik prefers to put into it a dark, chocolate-colored salsa made with chiplote chilies and piloncillo (unrefined sugar cones), but since he didn't have any of those ingredients lying around last night he used a heaping TBS of Shakti's roasted red pepper sauce and it turned out pretty darned good.

You have to saute the onions a long time, which seems to be one of the bloodstone secrets of any good cooking, until the chopped up beauties stick their sweetness to the bottom of the saute pan and you can steal it for yourself by adding a little beer and swirling them together.

As far as garlic and shallots, never do what the cookbooks tell you to do, but instead saute the onions by themselves, deglacee the pan with the beer, and then and only then add raw, chopped up garlic and shallots, so their flavor is still distinct when you finally get to the sausages.

You can use gourmet sausages, and you can also drive a Lexus SUV with a huge sound system so your Barry Manilow records can be played at atmospheric volume, if you like. But it's really foolish. Drive a small car that's easy to park, get PD to make you a tape with Waldemar Bastos on it, and just use the best quality traditional Italian sausages you can find. TGP likes to mix up hot and sweet -- maybe two hot Calabrians and two sweet with fennel.

Fresh herbs ONLY. Do NOT denigrate Salsa Negra or Salsa Shakti with dried spices. It doesn't matter which you use, basil, parsley, tarragon or all three, but they have to be fresh, and added with the garlic and shallots, not before.

A larger, textured pasta is best -- farfalle or trofie are really good.

If humanly possible, and this is never easy, don't eat the salsa and sausages until tomorrow. They'll taste twice as good. Go for a taco today. Tomorrow you feast.