Thread: Spaghetti and vodka sauce.

This is pretty neat dish, very typical restaurant staple and actually pretty easy to make at home.
I've tweaked it quite a bit over the years and i love making it
The vodka has only one real purpose and that is to extract the alcohol soluble flavours from the tomatoes before cooking.
I'm also including the method for making your own pasta if you would like to give it a try.

Ingredients:
3-4 slices of bacon
2 tins of diced tomatoes and the juice
1/2 cup of vodka (not flavoured, just plain ol' vodka)
A small sprig of rosemary
1/4 tsp of chilli flake
450g of ground ox heart(by my experience the absolute BEST meat for making italian meat sauces, you can either get your butcher to grind it or just pulse it in the food processor like i do)
1/2 cup of cream
1 onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
A small handful of basil leaves
1 bay leaf
Salt & pepper
Parmesan cheese

Method:
Empty the contents of the tomatoes into a bowl with the vodka, mix thoroughly. Let it sit for at least an hour in the fridge.

Dice up your bacon and add it to a pan with a little splash of olive oil, render it until not quite crispy, remove and set aside, leaving the oil.
FInely chop the onion and add it to the pan with a pinch of salt, saute for a minute then add the meat, fry until the meat is nicely browned then add the garlic, bay leaf and rosemary.

Add the cream and turn the heat down, reduce until slightly thickened, add the chilli flakes.
Transfer the mixture to a large pot with the bacon and add the tomatoes and chopped basil, simmer on low heat for 2 hours, topping up the water occasionally.
Adjust for seasonings and you're done!
Serve on spaghetti with some parmesan cheese.

Now for homemade pasta, if you so desire.

Ingredients (for two people)

200g of flour, sifted
1 egg

Place the flour and egg into a food processor (makes it so much quicker trust me) pulse until it comes together as a dough.
Put it on a board and knead until no longer sticky, let it rest for 10 minutes.
Roll it out as thin as you can and dust it very liberally with flour on either side, roll it up and slice thinly.
Congrats, you have now made pasta, boil for no more than a minute in salted water.

Enjoy

Will try the Ox heart. Always used pork mince. Beef mince is shit in comparison.

Originally Posted by kiwijames

Will try the Ox heart. Always used pork mince. Beef mince is shit in comparison.

It works really well, cheaper too It's much tougher and leaner so it lends itself really well to a slow cooked tomato sauce as it retains a bit of bite.
There should be enough fat with the oil and bacon but if not just mix a bit of pork fat into the grind and you'll be sweet.

Your food processor must be a grunty one as I wouldn't dare put a dough in my little thing.

Really? Mine's pretty normal.

angus: wholegrain spag, vodka, anchovy cooked into oily paste, bit of chilli, toss with blanched rocket leaves...

Gotta have room for anchovies in that recipe Angus. Will definitely try that one.
Cheers.

When i learned it at culinary school we didn't add anchovies. It's meant to be a bit lighter than your typical marinara sauce and anchovies add a lot of richness.
Of course, it's yours to adjust so if you want to add them, add them.

Originally Posted by Angus_A

When i learned it at culinary school we didn't add anchovies. It's meant to be a bit lighter than your typical marinara sauce and anchovies add a lot of richness.
Of course, it's yours to adjust so if you want to add them, add them.

I went to the Haast river culinary school so tbh, what would I know? lol.
I will try it your way. I'll try it with anchovies another time if I reckon there is room. I would have flicked you a few venny hearts but I am partial to them and liver. So with this recipe ya might be out of luck!

I studied at le cordon bleu, nearly finished too!

Cheers. I'll give it a go. I make tomato based pasta dishes with minced turkey legs which work well too. My wife (Italian/Swiss) uses Martini (vermouth) in risotto and it also gives a nice flavour.

Tried the ox heart/vodka recipe last night. Beautiful. That will definitely become a staple recipe in our kitchen. Cheers.

Originally Posted by johnino

Tried the ox heart/vodka recipe last night. Beautiful. That will definitely become a staple recipe in our kitchen. Cheers.

Gunna have a crack myself this week but it will be Australian meat. I hope it doesn't make to much of a difference as far as heart is concerned. All the beef I have tried here is not what I am used to.




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Originally Posted by johnino

Tried the ox heart/vodka recipe last night. Beautiful. That will definitely become a staple recipe in our kitchen. Cheers.

Fantastic