Vodka brings ordinary bowl of pasta to another level

Making a special dish with ingredients on hand is a winner in any book. And most pasta dishes fall into that category.

But pasta with a tomato sauce is, well, just pasta with a tomato sauce. Using a fun-shaped pasta and upping the sauce game can take an ordinary bowl of pasta to another level.

Today’s recipe for Pasta Alla Vodka Sauce is one of my favorite to make. One thing I like about it is that it calls for ingredients that I always have on hand — canned tomatoes, dried pasta and a bottle of vodka.

The origins of this dish aren’t real clear. Some sources say it’s Italian while others say it’s an Italian-American dish. What’s often cited is that the dish was created at Dante, a restaurant in Bologna. And others cite Luigi Franzese as creating a dish of Penne alla Russa, in which vodka was used to thin the sauce at the New York City restaurant Orsini. There’s also many references that indicate that James Doty, a graduate of Columbia University, created Penne Alla Vodka.


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