The Ultimate Penne alla Vodka

What if we've been doing it all wrong all along?

I’ve been arguing for a while now that “Italian food” is an American invention, created over decades by the immigrants that came to the US from Italy. Forced to use different ingredients and excited to use more “luxury” ingredients that were out of their budgets in Italy, their recipes evolved into Italian food. Bigger portions, more noble cuts, less ‘off’ cuts, combining of dishes that were always separate "(spaghetti and meatballs for example).

The Italian immigrants were early food influencers, adapting what they knew to American palates while also making everything visually irresistible.

Long story short, “Italy” became a thing in 1861 when they unified all the city states and regions that had been their own entities - with their own languages, cuisines and customs for centuries. The language they picked, the one we know as “Italian” is actually Florentine, and there is still enormous regional pride within Italy. Pro Tip: if you ever visit, find the regional cuisine “hits” of the place you’re going and eat like a local, because opportunists will be all too happy to sell you what you think you should be eating (i.e. “Italian food). If you don’t do any research you’ll eat well, but you could have the same thing down on Mulberry Street, any given Sunday.

OK enough of that.

Recipes with cream, written in Italian almost always use “panna da cucina” or “panna acida”. This is something I’ve noticed over the years, but to me they just read as “cream” and “kitchen cream.” So guess what, I use cream, just like everyone else. Using cream, however, is lost in translation. I recently had a long chat with my friend Luca Manfe. He’s an Italian that’s been living stateside for two decades, he also won Masterchef 4. As we were talking about “the rights and wrongs” of food, Luca told me that he was using sour cream the other day and it hit him, panna acida is sour cream. Immediately I said to him, “so you don’t have to worry about it curdling when you add it to hot ingredients” to which Luca replied “exactly and it’s now a thickener rather than a thinner that needs to be reduced”.

So that brings us to Penne alla Vodka.

It’s the second most sought after “Italian” recipe after Bolognese. The branding is great; it uses vodka! (vodka catalyses the break-down of different flavors, giving you that “why is the sauce better the next day?” feeling, without having to wait). Cream yields an approachable color and of course it’s easy to create. All the ingredients for success are there, and it’s been quite successful as a dish. My version uses sweet onion, tomato paste and 2 pints of cherry tomatoes. This gives a more rustic texture which is still very much luxuriously creamy but with more variance than the recipes you’ve most likely tried. Theirs are good, mine is ultimate.

Plus, using cherry tomatoes packs more tomato punch any time of year. That’s because they’re picked when they’re ripe and hold that flavor longer and have more pectin - which is great for creating saucy sauce. (Pectin is what makes jam so thick too.) Sour cream is the star here, you wouldn’t know it unless I told you, and curdling isn’t a thought at all now - fewf.

I mentioned this my my friend Josh Elkin, one of the original viral food creators and the only person I know still at it as long as my self. He texted me a few hours later:

Case closed.

Here’s the recipe:

serves 2 very hungry people or 4 if you’re making another dish like Sugar Snap Peas with Basil Ranch.

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 medium sweet onion, fine dice

1 tablespoon beef bullion or Better Than Bullion

1 tablespoon, double concentrate tomato paste (tube is always better)

red pepper flakes (if desired)

1 cup, fresh basil

2 pints Cherry tomatoes

1/2 Cup Vodka

1/2 Cup Pasta water

1/2 pound/220 grams Penne Rigate (pasta)

1/2 Cup Pecorino Romano Cheese

1/2 Cup Sour Cream

option: chive or parsley to finish

Equipment:

pot for boiling water

pan with a lid for making sauce

wooden spoon

knife

immersion blender

spider

Steps:

Fill the large pot with 3 quarts of water, set over high heat and bring to a boil.

Meanwhile, in your pan, set over medium heat, add the olive oil, the onion, the tomatoes paste, the bullion (or salt) and red pepper flakes (if desired). Stir and shake while sautéing for about 5 minutes, or until the onion gives up most of its water. Add the basil leaves and stir for another 30 seconds.

Add the cherry tomatoes to this mixture and with a pairing knife, poke a hole in each. turn up the heat, add the vodka, stir everything to combine and once it begins to boil, cover the pan and turn the heat to low.

At this point your pasta water should be boiling, salt the water and add the pasta. Set a timer for 1 minute under what the box says (we will finish cooking in the sauce).

After 5-6 minutes, remove the lid, and squash each of the tomatoes with the wooden spoon. Angle the pan away from you and use an immersion blender to create a “rustic puree”

Allow the sauce to continue to simmer, add the penne to the sauce with the spider and with the heat still on and the sauce bubbling, stir for 3 minutes. If the sauce looks a little tight you may add some pasta water.

Turn off the heat, add the sour cream and 3/4 of the pecorino Romano - stir until combined. Make any final adjustments the the sauce consistency with water if needed.

Serve and enjoy immediately, sprinkle the remaining pecorino Romano on each serving and any green garnish if desired.

If you enjoyed this writing, please pass it along!

-Frankie