8 Grain Spaghetti a la Vodka

Usually when my family is together in New York on the weekends we go out for lunch. But today was one of those rainy days that makes you want to stay home and not be bothered with the rest of the world. We went on a long walk in Central Park with Robin, and got just wet enough to get excited about a warm lunch. I offered to prepare something, and started mentally sifting through my pantry. If you recall, Emma and I canned a bunch of produce last summer, and I am just about finishing up on my Winter stores. I still have a few jars of stewed tomatoes left, and so I thought that a good tomato sauce with last Summer’s fresh tomatoes would be perfect. I would make a Vodka Sauce, one of my favorites. And I would add sun-dried tomatoes for a little more sweetness. In my head I knew it was a done deal.

When I got home, I just chopped up some onion and smashed a clove of garlic. I started cooking it up in the Mexican olive oil I picked up at Fairway the other week, and added about 4 or 5 chopped up sun-dried tomatoes. I let those sweat for a while with some salt, so that they could get really soft and tender. The only Vodka Sauce recipe that I have ever made uses cream. I could already hear my mother telling me that she can’t have dairy, so I was thinking of alternatives. Soy milk sounded so incredibly inappropriate, so I did not even go there. I then thought that I would do what I always read I am NOT supposed to do (but which I secretly love). I would aerate the tomatoes using the hand blender until they turned pink and a bit creamy. Well, it worked. I had to first blitz the tomatoes and their juices up with the blender, and added them to the pot with the onion, sun-dried tomato, and garlic. Once the contents of the pot came to a boil, I added a few lugs of vodka. I then simmered the sauce down quite a bit, and then blended it again with the hand blender, so it got quite creamy. I thus proved myself right in my belief that Vodka sauce can go without cream.

The week before I went to London, a friend took me on a small Brooklyn food tour. We stopped by Caputo’s in Carroll Gardens, where I picked up some of their ‘8 Grain’ spaghetti. I was eager to try it, as it has farro, whole wheat, and semolina flours, as well as a bunch of other grains. I fell in love with family-run Caputo’s the second I walked in the door. The grandfather, son, and grandson all work together making homemade pastas, antipasti, and homemade mozzarella (the grandfather’s specialty). The ‘8 Grain’ proved far superior to all of the whole wheat spaghettis that I have found in supermarkets, and went perfectly with the tomato sauce. My mom and sister loved the simple Sunday lunch. They described the sauce as “yummy” and even used the adjective “divine”. We eat better at home than in restaurants, that is for sure. But with a jar of home-canned tomatoes that were picked at their peak how can we not?