Can Food Friday remain relevant when experimenting with a recipe that is decades old, doesn’t contain kale, and is a wee bit twee? I was rooting around the internets earlier this week, ostensibly researching food ideas for this column. Though sometimes when I roam through food sites it just to mollify Mr. Friday, and the goal that is to prepare something tasty and nourishing, yes, and also somewhat interesting for our evening meal. His idea of bliss is not eating leftover chili for a week, silly rabbit. While we are never really close to the cutting edge of food fashion, sometimes we like to experience a little zeitgeist and stardust, and be au courant. Sometimes I am decades late.
Mondays are hard. After an eventful and exhaustively festive weekend here I did not want to reinvent the proverbial wheel, and I am always inclined to prepare the easiest and most comforting pasta meals on Mondays. I stumbled across this Penne alla Vodka dish, which is supposed to be one of Nigella Lawson’s all time most popular recipes, and yet I had never cooked it. Perhaps, finally, now would be a good time to indulge. And I imagine it could be just as deelish on a Friday or Saturday night when you are entertaining your dozens of stylish friends as it was on Monday.
When I first heard about pasta alla vodka I can remember thinking how decadent it was because it included vodka as one of its main ingredients. It wasn’t continental like Chicken Marsala or frivolous like Baba au Rhum. You must understand that I carry the weight and guilt and preoccupation with sin of several generations of stoically stern and hidebound New Englanders on my bowing shoulders. I doubt if Jo March had ever heard of vodka. (True confession: we have a bottle of vodka stashed in the freezer for emergencies. I can’t imagine what kind of emergency would actually require frozen vodka, but we will be prepared. Let me know if I can ever help you out.)
Penne Alla Vodka
(I halved this recipe – 2 pounds is too much of a muchness for 2 people.)
Salt
1 cup finely chopped onion
2 tablespoons garlic-infused oil
1 28-ounce can plum tomatoes or 3 cups finely chopped fresh tomatoes
2 tablespoons heavy cream
2 pounds penne rigate
½ cup vodka
4 tablespoons butter
Grated Parmesan cheese, for serving
1.Boil a large pot of salted water. Sauté onion, oil with a sprinkling of salt until soft and beginning to caramelize, about 10 minutes. Add tomatoes and their juices, and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes. Add cream, and remove from heat.
2.Cook the pasta until al dente. Drain it and return to cooking pot. Add vodka, butter and salt to taste. The air in the kitchen will be heady for a moment or two, as you remember your misspent youth. Add tomato mixture, and mix until pasta is coated.
This vodka sauce has gotten so popular over the years that you can buy jarred versions of it at the grocery store. My inner New England self frowns sternly at that notion, but the Monday me won’t narc you to your dinner guests. Although I think you will have fun putting it to the test, and actually cooking it yourself. And then you too will have a bottle of vodka in the freezer, and when Louisa May Alcott stops by for a chat you can make her a nice stiff Martini. I wonder if she would prefer a lemon twist to an olive?
As always, I would add a nice loaf of garlic bread, dripping with good butter and reeking and redolent with crushed garlic cloves, a nice tossed salad and a few glasses of plonk. Don’t forget to grate some fresh Parmesan cheese and light a few candles. It is still winter out there. Don’t let the early daffodils lull you into believing that spring is just around the corner. We have March lions sidling up, girding their leonine loins; waiting to catch us vulnerable, wearing shorts a couple of months early as we anxiously peer into the garden beds that get that little bit of extra sunshine every day, back by the garage, willing the crocuses up into pale violet blooms.
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/9347-penne-alla-vodka
“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.”
– Charles Dickens
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