The root of my desire was some pasta alla vodka that I always order at a local Italian restaurant. They serve their's with cheese tortellini and I decided to try my hand at making my own. I think it needed to have something good and meaty to go with it. The final result was Italian meatballs with cheese tortellini in vodka sauce. Yum!
The sauce recipe I found was from the Pioneer Woman. She's pretty handy in the kitchen so I figured I could trust her. Here's the root recipe:
1 medium diced onion
3 clove garlic, finely diced
3/4 cup vodka
1 can tomato puree
1 cup heavy cream
1/4 tsp salt
pinch red pepper flakes
1 Tbsp butter
pinch black pepper
I sauteed my onion and garlic before adding the vodka to simmer and reduce.
 |
| First error here- I'm a teacher and I cook on a shoestring budget. I used cheap vodka. Cheap vodka has stronger flavor and therefore needs to simmer and reduce longer to remove the vodka-ness of the taste. In the future I will honestly just use less vodka. I'm too cheap to shell out money for better stock although that would be the ideal solution. |
 |
| This is much more "red" than the sauce was in reality- my bad flourescent kitchen lighting is not kind to photographs. And no, there isn't a window in my kitchen from which to utilize natural light. |
I had made my meatballs beforehand and cooked my noodles while making the sauce. I used the pre-made fresh noodles you find packaged in the refrigerator unit at the store. I wasn't a huge fan sadly. I will probably try a couple of different varieties before giving up on convenience tortellini but I have kind of already decided to just use cheese ravioli next time. The sauce though was delicious.
Despite the changes I will make in future editions the meal was still delicious. And pretty!
Very impressive!!!
ReplyDelete