Tomatoes Again?

Why, yes, since that's about what's left in my burned out garden. Besides, they're pretty damned good and the time when there won't be tasty, fresh tomatoes will come too fast for me! So, I've been having them a couple times a day. Good thing I've got several different varieties, no?

Here's one of the things I look forward to all those barren months of canned tomatoes — pasta alla vodka. Dawna on Chocolate & Zucchini asked if it was the new classic Penne alla Vodka and, of course the answer is "yes" except that it's made with sunny Kellogg's Breakfast tomatoes instead of conventional red ones and spinach tagliatelle because the color and flavor suit the sauce so much better than bland, white penne.


The ingredients are simple: onions and garlic; peeled, seeded and juiced chopped tomatoes; fresh basil; a bit of cream; and a bit of vodka, plus the essential salt and pepper. Yes, that's really tomato on the chopping board and, yes, it's really yellow. You can see the whole one in the entry called "At Long Last! Tomatoes!!!"





And here are the onions and garlic sweating just the merest bit. Doesn't look like very much, does it? But that was lunch for just me.










Next everything sorta happens at once. But the good news is that the chaos only lasts minutes and then comes the best part of all— tasting! Warm the cream a bit in the micro-wave while the tomatoes and basil go in the pan with the aromatics. The warm cream and the vodka are next to the pan. Look! Even the cream has turned a lovely pale yellow. Let it all just bubble together for a minute (this whole sequence only takes about 3!) and LUNCH!







Did I mention the tagliatelle? Everybody knows how to boil pasta! But what I recommend for this Slam-Bam-Thank-You-Ma'am 5 minute circus, is that you boil the pasta before you even begin the sauce. If you add a generous amount of olive oil to the boiling water you can hold the cooked pasta in a strainer for 5 or 10 minutes without any sticking. But save that hot pasta water and keep it on a simmer while you do the sauce. Bring it back to a boil and add the pasta for that last minute when you're warming the cream and vodka. That way nothing waits and what you DON'T want to do with this sauce is ruin it by letting it overcook. You want all the light, sunny, fresh taste of the garden and that's exactly what this is!

It's also great fun, no, to have a tomato sauce that's so surprising! At least it always amuses the hell out of me. ...and the BIG bonus is that these Kellogg's Breakfast tomatoes are as delicious as they are unconventional.