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10/16/2001 Archived Entry: "Quick Pasta Sauces"

Yesterday, Monday night, I taught at a la carte, Polly Talbot’s cooking school in Lynbrook, Long Island. It was a class on Italian-American dishes and one of them was Penne alla Vodka, which was actually invented in Italy in the early 1970's as a promotion for hot pepper-flavored vodka, then was quickly abandoned on that side of the Atlantic at the same time that it was embraced here. It is nothing more than a chili-flavored tomato-cream sauce with vodka. Indeed, the vodka is not even necessary. Vodka, as you may or may not realize, is, according to U.S. law, tasteless, colorless, and odorless. One can easily make the same sauce without any vodka. (Please note: There is a tiny error in the recipe as it appears on this website and that I don’t, at this time, have the ability to correct. The garlic should be minced, which is not noted. Also, I would add the hot pepper with the tomatoes, not later, as is indicated.)

“Easily make” are the operative words for today. The class was amazed at how easily made and quickly made the sauce was. You sauté some minced garlic very briefly, add pureed tomatoes, a big pinch of hot pepper, some vodka, simmer three minutes, then add cream and cook a couple of minutes more. The whole thing takes less time to prepare than it takes to boil the pasta. I actually went to the trouble of draining a can of peeled tomatoes and pureeing them in a food mill, which of course gave me an additional piece of equipment to wash. But you can even more easily make a delicious sauce with already pureed or “crushed” tomatoes – out of the can, a box, a jar.

Then today, Sean, my assistant, was telling me how he was scolding his roommate, Courtney, about going to a really bad Italian restaurant in the neighborhood. He pointed out to her that she would spend much less money and eat much better if she splurged on good store-bought frozen ravioli and a jar of even expensive tomato sauce. It wouldn’t be as good as homemade, but better than the restaurant’s sauce. “Even she can cook that,” he said, “and she wouldn’t have to deal with those nasty waitresses.”

To that I remarked, as I often do: “I would never leave home for a bowl of pasta.”

This is not to say I wouldn’t eat pasta in a restaurant. But if all I wanted for dinner was some pasta, it would never dawn on me to go out for it. If I was being really, really lazy, which I certainly can be, I would just boil some spaghetti and eat it with nothing but olive oil and pepper. Or raw chopped garlic and oil. Or butter and Parmigiano. I wouldn’t even cook a little tomato sauce, which, from scratch, I can do in 15 minutes with a can of tomatoes, oil, and a tiny onion or some garlic. Actually, I could write a book on all the ways I can sauce pasta in the time it takes to boil it, or less. Maybe I will some day.

Meanwhile, great minds think alike, as they say, and no sooner had these words come out of my mouth (to Sean) than I got the following sales pitch letter from Beatrice Ughi, the owner of Esperya, the on-line purveyor of artisinal Italian food products. Esperya carries truly superior pasta products, as Beatrice says in the letter, but the reason I am quoting it here is because she also offers some wonderful and simple recipes that take less time to cook than the pasta itself.

By the way, this was not a personal letter, despite the direct salutation. If you are a subscriber to Esperya, you, too, have received this letter – addressed personally to you.

Also by the way, cooking pasta directly in sauce, as is mentioned in the patent for the pan that Beatrice mentions, is nothing new, only the silly pan for doing it. In the 18th and 19th centuries, in Naples and the south of Italy in general, pasta was frequently cooked directly in sauce. It makes for a dish that is more starchy than we like food these days, so I don’t in general recommend it. There are, however, pasta products, namely lasagne, that have been developed for this purpose. They are sold in our supermarkets, so they aren’t even obscure products.

Dear Arthur,

I thought this was pretty good timing. I just read that a U.S. Patent had been granted to a special pan and method of cooking pasta without water. WOW! I can't wait to try this! I am sure you are wondering how you could have lived this long without this invention and want to learn more about it! Here you are: Waterless Pasta Cooker Patent.

On a more serious note, while everybody knows how to cook pasta (if you don't, please give us a call at 914-592-5544), there is a certain confusion about matching pasta shapes with the right sauce. I guess that for Italians, who start eating pasta when they are still infants and continue throughout their life -- sometimes twice a day -- it comes somewhat naturally. Wouldn't everybody know that orecchiette go well with broccoli rabe, spaghetti with puttanesca, linguine with pesto?

If you don't have it in your blood, it is not hard to learn. Long strand pasta such as spaghetti, spaghettini, capellini, linguine is best with smooth sauces. Wider long noodles, such as fettuccine (not "fettuccini", please) or strozzacavalli (stranglehorses) can more easily support slightly chunkier sauces. In general, short tubular or molded pasta shapes do an excellent job of trapping chunkier sauces: small to medium chunks make more sense with fusilli, pennette, gnocchette; large chunks are best with cencioni, rigatoni, or other large tubes.

Please look at our recipes, they are designed to help you:
Esperya Pasta Recipes.

No matter the shape of the pasta, I adamantly believe that the pasta, not the sauce, should be the focal point. Our pasta has a flavor of its own, nothing compared to the cardboard taste of industrial pasta. I like it even as simple as pasta al burro e parmigiano, which is what it says: pasta with butter and Parmigiano. If I want to get fancy, I add some freshly ground pepper and I am in heaven.

Grazie mille!
Beatrice