Spaghetti alla busara – spaghetti with langoustines

Every year in July the charming maritime city of Choggia (often refereed to as 'la piccola Venezia', the little Venice) hosts a big festival, the sagra del pesce, celebrating its long-held fishing tradition and wonderful seafood cuisine. It has recently become an unmissable event for my parents – a sort of new family tradition, which I am happy to honour whenever I happen to be around (you'll never see me bailing out from the prospect of a seafood feast).

Along the main pedestrian street, arrays of stalls offer a series of seafood-based piatti tipici at reasonable prices: from fritto misto to risotto di pesce, from peoci in cassopipa (steamed mussels in parsley sauce) to baccala. The dynamics – well – those resemble any other food festival in Italy. Patrons form scattered queues in front of the cashier, yell their order to the overwhelmed lady at the till, wait (impatiently) for a table to clear, sit down – not without pestering the tables nearby, finish a jug of prosecco (rigorously on tap), go for a second round (hear their name, pick up the order), sit down bothering everyone else once more, and finally tuck in with gusto, leaving behind a trail of emptied bivalve shells. It's a fun, folkloristic experience; a full immersion in the atmosphere of the place, and an occasion to eat some very delicious fish.

It was at this sagra del pesce that i first tasted Spaghetti alla busara (spaghetti with scampi/langoustines). I had never come across it before (a sign of how many facets of regional Italian cuisine can have, and of how different food can be even between two neighbouring towns); I was intrigued. Needless to say, I was pretty pleased to see some fat scampi coming my way as my order reached the table. The sauce itself turned out to be of the simplest kind (just tomato, parsley and a hint of chilli, all brought together by olive oil and wine) but impeccable in its basic nature; no need to mess about with good scampi after all.

Since then, Spaghetti alla busara has become the sort of pasta I like making for friends when cooking Venetian. It's impressive and yet unfussy, refined but a bit messy, and it asks for licking your fingers like there's no tomorrow. I like to think of it as a feast in itself.