It's Cooking Time

Hello!

It has been a while since I posted any recipes, and frankly it has been a while since I have been able to cook what I want when I want. Living with Greg's parents this summer was great, but I really missed having my own kitchen, with my pots/pans, knives, groceries, etc. It has been fabulous being able to organize my kitchen, use our cookware, and really make I want. I hadn't really realized how much I missed it.

Tonight, I decided to make Vodka Cream Sauce for pasta. I had made Rachael Ray's "You Won't Be Single for Long Vodka Cream Pasta" before, but I was feeling up for a challenge. When I googled that recipe I saw this one, "Penne with Vodka Sauce" by Giada de Laurentiis. I liked her recipe better because it called to make her Simple Tomato Sauce first, and I've been wanting to make a tomato sauce from scratch lately. I knew that would be a difficult task until I had a light go off in my head today about how to get rid of the chunks (which Greg and I hate). I got an immersion blender as a wedding gift, and I knew this would be the perfect occasion to use it! And as always, I made a few changes to suit our tastes.

Here the journey begins... It all starts with getting your veggies ready. You need one onion, some garlic (I used 6 small cloves, we LOVE garlic, so if you don't love it then use less), a carrot, and a stalk of celery.

Mince the garlic, and chop the onion. Throw them in the pot with a big dose olive oil and saute them until they are starting to get soft. A problem that I used to have was that I always burned my garlic, which is not the most delightful taste. I have found that if you put the garlic and onion in before the oil gets hot and then heat it all together, it doesn't burn as easily! I learned that from reading one of my cookbooks, and it is a tip that has really helped me.

Next, chop up the celery and carrot. Add them after the onions and garlic have started to soften, and cook them all together until everything is pretty soft. I think this took me about 15 minutes. Make sure that you keep stirring it so that nothing gets burned. Also, add a salt and pepper to taste. I love using kosher salt.

This is one place where I made a deviation from the recipe. I added a splash of red wine to deglaze the pan to get all that yummy goodness off the bottom. Now, Ina Garten says that you should always use a wine that you will drink because you don't want it to taste like cheap wine. Well, lucky for me, I actually like cheap wine. It's pretty much all I drink, and so I'm not going to tell you what I used (let's just say it was on sale, so we bought it). Just use whatever you drink!

I let the wine cook out a lot. The next step is to add your tomatoes. The recipe calls for crushed tomatoes, but I didn't have those because we don't eat them. I used cans of tomato sauce because that's what I had. I'm a firm believer in using what you have instead of running out to the store because "oh no! I have tomato sauce but not crushed tomatoes!" It didn't matter because it all gets blended in the end.

You mix everything together and let it simmer for at least an hour.

Next is the fun part! You taste. Decide what it needs, more salt? more pepper? Add whatever you think it needs. Then get your blender ready. Like I said before, I used my immersion blender because it's so much easier and less to clean up later. Make sure that you put the blender in all the way before you turn it on, other wise you will have a HUGE mess to clean up. You can also pour the mixture into a regular blender. Just make sure to take the plastic thing out of the lid of the blender and cover that with a towel, or the lid will blow off when you go to press blend. Something about the hot sauce expands, and if you thought your would have a mess with the immersion blender, look out because that will be a disaster!

After I got the sauce nice and smoother, I ladled out half of the sauce into a container that I am going to put in the freezer for another day.

First things first, put on a big pot of water. Make sure to salt it and add some olive oil to the water so that your noodles don't stick together, and it helps prevent your water from boiling over. I learned that tip from my mom.

Now on to the vodka part! Add a cup of vodka! Remember, use what you drink. =) You need to crank the heat up a bit and cook the vodka and sauce until it has reduced by 1/4. I didn't this like I should have tonight, and we had a ZING of vodka after taste. Next time, I will make sure to crank the heat up, which is what I did not do tonight. I just left it on low and let it cook about 20 minutes.

Bring the heat back down to low. When it stops bubbling like crazy, add 1/2 cup of cream. You don't want it to be too hot because the cream will curdle (yuck). Next, the recipe calls for 1/2 cup of grated parmesan, but I only had asiago. SO, I added 1/2 a cup of asiago. Mix it in, until it is nice and creamy.

Make sure you pay attention to the pasta. Drain it while it is al dente (it has a little bite to it). I put the pasta in our pasta bowl, and then ladled some of the sauce on top. I mixed it together, and then added some asiago and basil leaves on top.

Voila! A delicious italian dinner! We had some wonderful focaccia bread that we got from the Farmer's Market this morning that we had with it. It was very good, and Greg liked it!