Making Newman's Vodka Sauce Awesome

My wife and I just finished a simple pasta dinner where I got a little creative with a jar of Newman's Own Vodka Sauce. It was awesome. She doesn't really like Newman's sauces, but even she thought it was excellent.

Here's what I did:

Ingredients:
1 lb Dry penne pasta
1/8 of a white onion, sliced extraordinarily thin and then diced small
2 cloves of garlic paste
2 plum tomatoes, diced after removing the seeds
kosher salt
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
2 shots of vodka
1 jar Newman's Own Vodka Sauce

Procedure:
Put ~1 gallon of salted water on to boil. If you don't cover it, the timing will probably work out perfectly, as long as your stove is about the same temperature as mine (~15 minutes to boil). Once it boils, add the penne and cook until done. Drain, but do not rinse. While the pasta is heating/the pasta is cooking...

Heat about 1tbsp of EVOO over medium-low and add the onion and a pinch of salt while you prepare the garlic paste (about 5 minutes).

Add the garlic paste and stir it in. Allow it to continue heating while dicing the tomatoes (about 5 more minutes).

Add the diced tomatoes and another pinch of salt, and allow cook for ~3 minutes. Add a shot (1.5 oz) of vodka, turn the heat up to medium, and cook until soft, stirring regularly (~5-6 minutes).

Add the jar of sauce, and then rinse out the jar with another shot of vodka (split in half and rinse twice), shaking it around and dumping it into the sauce pot. Turn the heat up to high and stir constantly until boiling, then reduce the heat to low until the pasta is ready to serve. The idea is to get the sauce hot enough that the alcohol is boiling off while you wait for the pasta.

The only thing that might have made this better is a bit of fresh basil in with the tomato just before adding the sauce.

Estimated prep time: 30-35 minutes.

2017-02-25 Edit: Slight changes to how to do the tomatoes and heating after adding the sauce.

Garlic Paste

This is not the recipe I wanted to post (see Making Newman's Vodka Sauce Awesome), but because this is required by that recipe, I decided to post the two back-to-back.

Anyway, garlic paste is surprisingly useful. I only learned about it a couple weeks ago, but it has made for some excellent garlic bread and pasta multiple times since. And it's seriously easy to make.

Ingredients:
Garlic cloves
Kosher salt

Procedure:
Peel, clean, smash, and mince the garlic. Pile the garlic up and sprinkle a pinch of kosher salt over it.

Mush the garlic with the blade of your knife at a sharp angle, pressing down as you slide the knife across it, grinding the salt into the garlic. Pile it up if it spreads too far. Stop when it is so pasty that you can barely see it against your cutting board.

Use the blade of your knife to scrape it up.

Estimated prep time: 3 minutes. Maybe a bit longer if you're doing more than four or five cloves.

Vegetarian sausage gravy

Ingredients:
1/2 lb	Vegetarian sausage (I use MorningStar Farms' 6-pack)
3 tbsp	Butter
2 tbsp	Flour
2 cups	Milk (skim works well; higher fat will thicken more and require more for thinning)
1/2 tbsp	Rubbed sage
3/4 tsp	Savory (optional)
(to taste)	MSG, salt, black pepper

Procedure:

Thaw the sausage patties if they are frozen. For MorningStar Farms, I microwave for 2-3 minutes on high with all six patties on one plate.

Shred the sausage patties. I use two forks, one to anchor a patty and the other to pull off chunks. It should look like cooked ground beef when finished, but a little chunkier.

Melt the butter in a large frying pan. Add the sausage and cook on medium heat, stirring regularly, for 5-10 minutes. The sausage should take on a slightly darker color, and the granules will look a little smaller.

Sprinkle the flour on top, one tablespoon at a time, stirring until it is not really visible any more. This is also a good time to mix in some black pepper; I usually go with about a dozen turns of my grinder.

Add the milk and mix until the sausage is evenly distributed. Add the sage. Turn the heat up to high and keep stirring until the milk begins to boil. The gravy should thicken very quickly at this point, so turn the heat down to medium-low until the desired thickness is reached. Add the rest of the seasonings to taste. I usually use about a half teaspoon each of MSG and kosher salt, and sometimes a little more black pepper.

If the gravy gets too thick, stir in more milk to thin it to your liking. It will tend to thicken a bit as it cools, so aim for a little thinner than you want it to be on the plate.

This recipe works great for sausage gravy and biscuits (or, as my wife and I tend to say, "sausage biscuits and gravy"). It should cover 4-6 biscuits, or all 8 of a Pillsbury can if you use enough milk.

Not what you think (macaroni and cheese)

I've been updating my other blog, Ramblings of a Computer Guy fairly often lately with notes about making my own bitters. But, in doing so, it reminded me of this sorely neglected blog. My entries on bitters may belong here, being culinary in nature, but I decided that this blog is really intended for full recipes.

So, without further ado, the pièce de résistance, my favorite recipe, the one I tend to make when first cooking for somebody new... (Insert drumroll here)

Macaroni and cheese!

"Really?" I hear from my future readers. "Macaroni and cheese?"

Some of you may be thinking, "But I can get that out of a box! It's made by some company... What's their name? I think it starts with a K..." You probably don't belong here, but please stick around, you might learn something awesome.

The rest of you are probably thinking, "But that's so simple! Why even bother with a recipe?"

To be honest, I don't. I make it up anew every time. But recipes, with very few exceptions, are only to be made once, maximum. After that, you should be tweaking to your own personal tastes.

So, here you go. This is my own tweaked version of my mother's recipe, and the measurements are estimated, since I've never checked them. Make it and enjoy:

Ingredients:
1 lb medium pasta shells
3 tbsp butter (I use salted, but it doesn't really matter)
4 tbsp flour
1/2 tsp yellow mustard powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4-1/2 tsp cayenne pepper, to your liking
1 1/2 cups milk (I use skim)
3/4 lb cheddar cheese, shredded or cubed small
1/4 lb American cheese
1/2 bunch fresh parsley, de-stemmed and coarsely chopped (probably about 3/4 cup)
1 tbsp dry parsley
1-2 tbsp black peppercorns, to your liking, ground
3-4 tbsp Italian seasoned breadcrumbs
Kosher salt to taste, probably about 1 1/2 tsp
Optionally, 1/4 cup white wine

Procedure:
Preheat the oven to 350 (my oven needs 365).

Boil and salt water for the pasta. Par-boil the shells. Try to have them finish at the same time the cheese sauce is ready. Do not rinse unless absolutely necessary, and don't get rid of the pot.

Toss the cheese with 1 tbsp of flour to lightly coat.

Melt the butter in a medium saucepan and make a blonde to peanut butter colored roux with the flour. Add the mustard, onion, and garlic powders while it is cooking.

Add the milk and whisk out any clumps. Add the black pepper, cayenne pepper, and about a tsp of kosher salt. Once the mixture is hot, begin adding cheese, stirring almost constantly. Plan for three or four equal additions, allowing it to melt in between. After the second or third addition, add the wine if you like. Its purpose is to prevent the cheese from breaking and to add some flavor. If not using wine, be extra careful with your heat. Add the dry parsley after the last batch of cheese. Season to taste, remembering that it needs to be strong to flavor the bland pasta.

Once both the noodles and cheese sauce are ready, mix them in the pasta pot, along with the fresh parsley. Pour this all into a round oven-safe dish and top with a light coating of breadcrumbs.

Bake for 30 minutes, and let sit for 5-10 more before serving.

Serves about 6 depending on how hungry they are.

I also recommend using gruyère in addition to, or instead of, the cheddar. Something soft like American cheese is necessary to keep the sauce from getting grainy, but please experiment.

Rice

I used to screw up rice more often than I got it right. I still mess up occasionally, but I can consistently make rice correctly if it's an amount that I've done before.

The problem is the non-linear ratio of dry rice to water. For example, when I make medium-grain white rice, the best ratio is 1 cup rice to 1.66 cups water, but it is 2 cups rice to 2.66 cups water. If it was linear, it would be 2 to 3.33.

The place where this gets me most often (where I completely screw up and make inedible rice) is when I'm making sushi rice. I know that I need exactly 3.5 cups of water with 3 cups of washed sushi rice, but any time I try a different amount, it comes out as a big pot of mush.

I have also found that every boxed rice kit (wild rice, rice pilaf, ...) has the wrong ratio. I really like Zatarain's wild rice, which calls for 2.25 cups water and the box of rice mix. But if I follow those directions, there is still a puddle of water in the bottom of the pot when the time is up.

So, here is my recipe for rice and the water to rice ratios that I've found work best. I will try to fill in more ratios as I find good ones.

Ingredients:
(Some)	Dry rice (see ratios below)
(Some)	Water (see ratios below)
Optional ingredients by style Per dry cup of rice
American
1-1.5 tbsp	Butter
0.5-1 tsp	Kosher salt
1-2 tbsp	Dry parsley (optional)
Asian
0.25 tsp	MSG
OR
2 in2	Dry kelp (Kombu)
Latin/Spanish
1 pinch	Saffron
OR
0.5 pkt	Goya saizon con culantro y achote (or sans achote)
OR
0.25-0.5 tsp	Ground turmeric (for color only)
0.25-0.5 tsp	Garlic powder
0.25-0.5 tsp	Onion powder or dried onion
Indian
1 tsp	Whole cumin seed
1-1.5 tsp	Butter or ghee

Procedure:

Boil the water with all extra ingredients (butter, salt, MSG, parsley, ...).

Add the rice. If not already at high heat, turn up to high.

Wait for the water to boil.

Cover, drop the temperature to low-low-medium, and wait for 25 minutes.

Remove the cover, and wait for 5 more minutes.

Fluff the rice, preferably with a fork or chopsticks.

Rice	Water
Medium Grain White Rice
1 cup	1.66 cups
2 cups	2.66 cups
Sushi Rice (washed)
3 cups	3.5 cups
Basmati Rice
2 cups	3.5 cups

Sushi rice is a separate post (I will explain washing), probably coming up next. I will link to it once it is available.

When making a boxed rice kit, I've found that it always comes out correctly if I subtract 0.25 to 0.5 cups of water from the amount they specify on the packing.

Beans

Ingredients:
1 lb	Dry beans
1 tsp	Kosher salt
1	Bay leaf
2-3	Sliced garlic cloves
2-3	Sliced dry chilies (optional)

Procedure:

Preheat the oven to 250°F.

Put a gallon of water on high heat.

Sort (remove stones and ugly beans), and rinse the beans. Put the beans into a large oven-safe pot along with the other ingredients. Once the water boils, pour just enough into the pot to cover the beans. Cover the pot of beans and place it into the oven.

Check every 20-30 minutes to verify that the beans are still covered with water. If at any time they aren't, pour some more boiling water over them. After about an hour and a half, start testing for doneness.

This recipe can easily be doubled or tripled; all ingredient amounts increase linearly.

First Post!

I've been wanting to post recipes to my existing blog, Ramblings of a Computer Guy, but it just didn't seem to be topic-appropriate. So I created this one for the recipes. Hopefully I'll update it more often than the other one...