At first I thought of calling this post "Antti's 'I Don't Wanna Be Single' Penne alla Vodka", but let the recipe keep its original name, Rachael Ray's own. I hope the result is the same, and I shall wait and see 🙂
Penne alla vodka is an Italian invention, although these days it is quite hard to find in Italy. The dish goes back to the 1970s, when vodka was still unknown in Italy and the importers were doing everything they could to make it known. One of their marketing tricks was a recipe competition, and this vodka sauce was what came out of it. In the mid-seventies it was the fashionable pasta of the day, but now the best place to find penne alla vodka is America, where it is very popular.
In Boston my favourite Italian restaurant was Vinny Testa's in Brookline, and the best thing on its menu was penne alla vodka with sweet Italian fennel sausage and Asiago cheese. Mmm! It was cheap, only ten euros, but so big that it fed two, or left a second meal to take home. I often ate the pasta cold from the fridge as a midnight snack. Delicious!
This Rachael Ray recipe has no meat in it, but minced meat or fresh Italian sausage would go in very well. The sauce is really quick and easy to make, and it is ready in the time the pasta takes to boil. It is actually just an ordinary tomato and cream sauce with vodka added. Still, the aroma is unique, so there is nothing for it but to try.
Recipe card
Penne alla Vodka
- serves two (600 kcal per portion)
- Softening the shallots 3-5 min
- Boiling the pasta about 10-15 min
You will need
| 1/2 tbsp | oil |
| 1/2 tbsp | butter |
| 2 | shallots |
| 2-4 | cloves of garlic |
| 60 ml | plain vodka |
| 125 ml | chicken stock (from a cube is fine) |
| 400 g | tin of chunky crushed tomatoes |
| 225 g | penne rigate |
| 60 ml | cream (Valio's 10% three-cheese cooking cream worked nicely) |
| dark Maizena sauce thickener | |
| salt, pepper | |
| 10 | fresh basil leaves |
| grated Parmesan to serve |
Method
- Chop the shallots and garlic finely. Heat the butter and oil in a saucepan and soften the shallots and garlic for 3-5 minutes, until nicely browned.
- Add the stock and the crushed tomatoes and season with salt and pepper. Leave to simmer gently.
- Bring a large pan of water to the boil, salt it generously and cook the penne according to the packet (about 10-15 min) until al dente.
- Add the cream and vodka to the sauce and take the pan off the heat when it starts to bubble again. If the sauce seems too runny, thicken it with a handful of dark Maizena.
- Drain the pasta and stir it into the sauce with the shredded basil. Serve at once with grated Parmesan.
Rachael Ray is not yet known, in Finland at least, but in the United States (and, last I heard, in Australia) she is a hugely popular TV cook on Food Network. In Boston I often watched her show 30 Minute Meals, where dinner is made in half an hour. This recipe fits within that too. Rachael has also written numerous cookbooks, and one of them, the city guide $40 A Day: Best Eats in Town, was a Christmas present from Anna (Thanks!). An article in The New York Times last autumn sums up Rachael's achievements:
Though the nation's food elite might cringe, Ms. Ray, 37, is one of the most influential people cooking today. Let the big-name chefs fuss with foams and sous vide. She'll stick with hot dog nachos and "jambalika," a dish that is kind of like jambalaya. With more than 4 million books in print and four shows on the Food Network, Ms. Ray has shown America the way back to the kitchen.
The New York Times, 19 October 2005
She has fans aplenty, and I hear it is her mother who answers their letters. Nor am I the only one who thinks Rachael is cute:
Her mother answers her daughter's fan mail, which can range from children's drawings to marriage proposals to letters from recently widowed senior citizens. "She's big with the guys, let me tell you," her mother said.
The New York Times
Finally, a little eye candy for Taikinapoika's male readers at least. The American FHM (For Him Magazine) ran a photo feature on Rachael in 2003, and The New York Times described the pictures like this:
The shots feature Ms. Ray in short-shorts with an exposed midriff, licking chocolate off a big wooden spoon, eating a strawberry and sitting in a sink, laughing as suds cascade down her curvaceous thighs.
The New York Times
What more is there to add 🙂
19 comments
Sullon selvästi Valentinen päivä etuajassa... Noi FHM-kuvat kyllä jotenkin täysin vääristää Rachelin putipuhtoisen naapurintyttötyylin.
Eiks kaikki naapurintytöt olekaan kotona tollasia?-)
Mmm - I knew it must have been Antti and not Anna who posted these pictures:-)
I found the pasta alla vodka recipe from Nigella Lawson's "Feast" early last summer, and have since been cooking it almost weekly (f.ex. http://nami-nami.blogspot.com/2005/07/and-dash-of-vodka-please.html) - really easy and tasty. It's pretty much the same recipe, minus the chicken stock & Maizena..
PS Anteeksi että en kirjoita suomeksi:(
Pille,
Good to see you here 🙂 And no worries, I'm pretty sure most of the people here can read English.
I don't have Nigella's "Feast", but I can't read the "Domestic Goddess" without drooling - and I mean the /food/ this time 😉
The Maizena in the recipe was my own addition, as the consistency was a tad too watery for my taste.
Ok, I can totally not read in Finnish - but that was one gorgeous pasta picture. 🙂
Thanks, Anne 🙂
God damn it :)=
Hi! Thanks for coming by at my blog! What a pitty that we don't understand eachothers languages..although I of course understand penne alla vodka and Rachel Ray too:)Great site!!
Eiks toi kalkkunan paistaminen rintsikoihin pukeutuneena oo jonkinlainen health code violtation? Ja tollasissa korkkareissa? Vaadimme Yhdysvaltoja korvaamaan tytselin ohjelman Patakakkosella! Ihan kansan omaksi parhaaksi!
Kappas, sä avaat ihan uusia näkökulmia tuohon kuvaan. Mä näin vaan kaks hottia tsiksiä 😛
Ehdotus suomalaisversioksi Rachelista: vihreänkalpea luomunainen, jolla on ohut joko hampuksi hennattu tai skunkkiraidoitettu tukka, häärää ympäriinsä puuterinvärisisä rintsikoissa ja risoissa nailonsukkahousuissa (jotka pannaan sittemmin Niksi-Pirkan ohjeistamaan uusiokäyttöön esimerkiksi makaronilävikkönä tai teesihtinä). Katsos kun karjalanpaistia äheltäessä tulee keittiössä kuuma 😉
Anna, you have a wild imagination;-) Are you voluntairing, or do you have a suitable Finnish candidate in mind?
And using stockings to make up a teabag or drain your pasta is definitely unhygienic & violating every possible health code:-)
Of course it's going to be me - who else?... My husband has just moved back to Finland. He is going through reverse acculturation shock and sharing his impressions over the phone ("Kaikki helsinkiläiset pukeutuu koko ajan goretexiin ja Fjällravenin ja niin kuin ne olisi menossa jonnekin laavulle." "Suomalaisilta naisilta pitäis lailla kieltää hiusvärien käyttö. Niillä on vain kaksi hiustyyliä - henna ja skunkki. Molemmat näyttää kaameilta ohuissa hiuksissa.").
Pille, I'm definitely going to give your penne & vodka recipe a try, I have the dregs of a bottle of Finlandia (can any Finn resist the airport duty free???) in my fridge and, believe it or not, I'm not a big vodka drinker...
Personally, I think "Saaremaa viin" or "Viru Valge" works best:) Though I'm the same - I don't drink it, but now I can at least cook with it.. Maybe we should organise a vodka cook-off?
And curiously, henna is big in Estonia as well. An English friend of mine visited a few years ago and asked me afterwards, what's this red hair all about:)
It's not henna; it's beet color.
It's all about crappy hair - an unfortunate trait shared by Estonians and Finns alike I fear. My hair is so fine that NYC hairdressers would fry it into a crisp in a heartbeat. (Did I mention I live in Harlem?) So I jet back and forth between JFK and Helsinki to keep my hair looking awful in the normative Finnish way 😉 I *could* find Polish and Russian hair salons in the outer boroughs, but, well... you know...
Re: Viru valge vs. Finlandia. Apparently, Norwegians have a lot of jokes about Finns. (Sad, yes...) Here is one:
Two Finns are weathering a blizzard in a shed. Soon, they run out of liquid reinforcements. However, it is their lucky day: they find a dusty old bottle tucked between two hay bales. They cheer. The label on the bottle says: Methanol. They curse. Then they look at each other: "Actually, I think I have seen everything there is to see in life." --- "Kippis."
That's such a cruel joke, Anna! lol:)
[I must confess I only got the "I think I've seen everything there is to SEE in life" on the second reading:]
Pille, I'm so hooked on your penne & vodka (substituting sour cream and thai chili&garlic paste) that I actually had go out to the liquor store and get a bottle of Stolichnaya. I know, I know... but all other vodkas came in humongous 1l bottles.
Ihan noin uusi keksintö ei alkoholiin liukenevien makuaineiden uuttaminen taida olla, vaikka 70-luvun Italiassa se ilmeisesti muotijuttu olikin. Mutta erinomainen kastike on kyll