Fallen Souffle

I had you at vodka didn’t I My mom gave me a bag full of tomatoes that my Grandma canned this summer. Apparently Grandma has been busy because I have about 8 quart size jars in my house waiting to be used up. My sister has two jars, my Mom has a few left and we are visiting her this weekend so I am sure there is more. I welcome such things with open arms because nothing beats fresh tomatoes and I just don’t have the time or patience to do it myself. So what was suppose to be a “Zen” day on Sunday turned into a full blown cook-a-thon. I had aspiration to make lasagna but Evan is trying to eat better so that didn’t seem like a good idea. So I brought it down a notch and decided to make the sauce and see what I came up with.

I took the basic tomato sauce recipe from the Italian cookbook bible, Silver Spoon. Italian cooking is really simple and I think people try to fancy it up too much. This recipe is so simple but the result is heaven. Quality of ingredients is key because there are so few!

Basic Tomato Sauce
2 quarts of canned tomatoes
5 crushed garlic cloves
1 T. sugar
1-2 pinches of salt
couple tablespoons good olive oil
a handful of fresh basil

In a large heave pot, add tomatoes, garlic, salt and sugar and simmer, covered over medium low heat for about 30 minutes. Stir occasionally. Uncover and allow to cool for 15-30 more minutes until it reduces down. Remove from heat, add olive oil and basil and stir. When slightly cooled, blend in blender or with am immersion blender until desired consistency.

I used this sauce in a chicken puttanesca for later this week (recipe to come later) and used the rest for this lovely vodka sauce.

Vodka Sauce
1/2 pound chopped pancetta
1 quart Basic Tomato Sauce
1 cup vodka, no cheapy stuff here!
1/2 cup heavy cream, at room temperature (I used light half and half)
1/2 cup grated Parmesan

Heat a bit of olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add pancetta and cook until crisp. Add the tomato sauce and vodka in a and cook over low heat until the mixture reduces by 1/4, stirring often, about 20 minutes. Stir the cream into the tomato and vodka sauce. Simmer over low heat until the sauce is heated through. Stir in the Parmesan cheese until melted and well blended.
Serve with your favorite pasta.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 at 3:02 pm and is filed under Italian. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.