PENNE ALLA VODKA | School of Rocco

PENNE ALLA VODKA | School of Rocco
Welcome back to School of Rocco! Today we’re making Penne alla Vodka — the velvety, tomato-cream pasta everyone loves, made the right way.

👇 FULL RECIPE

Ingredients:
• 12 oz penne
• 2 tbsp butter
• 2–3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• 3 cloves garlic, smashed
• ½ cup tomato paste
• ½ cup vodka
• 1 cup heavy cream
• Crushed red pepper to taste
• Salt & pepper
• ½ cup grated Parmigiano Reggiano
• Fresh basil to finish

Method:
1. Cook penne in salted water until al dente.
2. In a large sauté pan, combine butter, olive oil, and garlic. Cook until aromatic.
3. Stir in tomato paste and cook until it deepens in color.
4. Add vodka and let it simmer until the alcohol cooks off.
5. Pour in heavy cream. Add red pepper and bring to a gentle simmer.
6. Add cooked penne directly into the sauce. Toss vigorously.
7. Finish with Parmigiano Reggiano and fresh basil.
8. Serve immediately — eat with joy.

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All right, everybody. Today we’re going to make panala vodka. Your favorite and mine. It is so good. Tomato paste, cream, parm, and butter mixed into one dish all at once. Let’s start by cooking the pasta. For pasta today, I’ve got my Joseeppe cocoa. Delicious pennet pasta made from Durham wheat or semolina. Make sure the pasta water is seasoned. And then we throw the pasta in. It’s called bha labasta. Bha labasta. Throw it in. And if you’re looking for this or any of the ingredients I’m using today, go to chefsmusthave.com. Okay, now the order goes garlic, shallot, basil, chili, tomato paste. That’s the base of pane ala vodka. Doesn’t really matter how you chop the garlic. You know, there’s a lot of debate about pasta in general. I’m not going to add to it with garlic neurosis. Okay, guys. Sliced shallots. As long as you get the garlic toasted, you will get the flavor from it that you need. These are shallots. Shallots add a mild onion flavor that’s, you know, super pleasant and really not going to take over the whole dish. Let’s put that in there, too. Let’s get the garlic toasted a little bit. We’re looking for a light brown here. We’re not looking for a really dark color on either of these aromatics. All right, we’re going to add the shallots to that. And then we’re going to add a little bit of chili flake. Now we’re going to add basil that I’m going to chop fine. We’ll call it a shifod. Basil starts to release its flavor the minute you touch it. So save some for the end, too. Ready, guys? Here we go. Boom. By the way, I like to add basil in the beginning and the end. So, I think there’s two ways to extract basil flavor. One is by cooking it in the fat. Basil molecules of basil flavor are lipoilic. Lipo meaning fat meaning it’s attracted to fat. I also know from experience that when you put basil in food at the end, it adds a lot of flavor as well. So if you do both, you’re going to get a rich basil uh extraction and a rich basil flavor. Right. And by the way, it smells like garlic, smells like basil, smells really good. We’re going to add a small can of tomato paste. In panala vodka, the tomato comes from tomato paste. Almost never fresh tomatoes. Sometimes canned tomatoes, but usually tomato paste. And we cook all this down. Sweat it all down. You want to activate tomato paste. You kind of want to caramelize it in the pan whenever you use it. So, let that cook. Let’s stir the pasta one more time. Make sure it’s actually sticking to the bottom of the pan but not sticking to each other. Now you can see that the tomato paste is caramelized. It’s cooked. It’s dried out in a good way and all the flavors have been activated. You can actually smell all this. Now we’re going to add vodka. By the way, there’s a lot of debate about vodka in vodka sauce. Some people claim there is no vodka in vodka sauce that it’s, you know, basically just a play on words, but let me make sure this is real vodka. Good. Definitely real stuff. All right, let’s be careful. You don’t want to pour the vodka into the sauce right over the pan because it can explode. So, I’m going to pull the pan away from the heat. Pour the vodka in, allow it to do that, and then let it catch on fire if there’s any alcohol left. You really don’t want a flambe at this point. You don’t want big explosions in your house if you can avoid them. Now, you add the cream. And as you can see, this is a pretty quick sauce. Cream and tomato is really what makes this dish sing. It’s all about the cream and tomato. That mixture, it’s like ketchup and mayonnaise. It’s the best of all worlds. You guys probably know this, but let me tell you anyway that penet refers to a pen. They are shaped like a quill in the old days when that would have been used as a pen. That’s why it’s called penet. All right. [Music] Okay. Right off the bat, I know it needs salt. I’m going to add more cream. So, as you can see, they call this pink sauce. And now you know why. It’s pretty pink. Very, very pink in color. Little black pepper. It’s a little bit spicy, by the way. Not too much. Just enough to make it interesting. Pretty good. Let’s cook it some more. Want to make sure the tomato is cooked to the point where it no longer tastes like it just came out of a can. We know we do that really well with other types of canned tomato. Tomato paste needs a little bit more of that. All right, we’re in good shape on the sauce. Now, this sauce is a lot thicker than some other sauces, so the marriage in this dish will be a lot faster. There’s less water in this sauce for the pasta to absorb. We have to cook the pasta a little bit more than we normally would for dry pasta. And the marriage should take a little bit less time than I’ve shown you in the past. It is ready. Now, make sure you grab pasta water with your pasta. Always grab a little pasta water. Notice I never drain my pasta. I always pull it out of the pan and put it directly into the pan with the sauce. All right. When the sauce is reduced and glazing the pasta nicely and it’s no longer forming a pool in the side of the pan, you add the butter. Toss, toss, toss. Mixy, mixy, mixy. So, think of it. Tomatoes, butter, cream, basil, garlic, shallots. And then you add the parmesano regiano. How could this not be everyone’s favorite? It’s got all the best ingredients in it. And then we can plate. [Music] We’re going to top it with a little more basil, a little more chili flake cuz my friends like it spicy, and a little parmesan reano. Boom. That looks good. Time to see if it tastes good. [Music] That is a great combination of flavors. I mean, it’s almost like sweet and sour pasta, you know? It’s got the sweetness and the sour of the tomato, the sweetness of the cream, the slightly acidic quality of parmesan orig. It’s really it’s all the all the best things. Pretty sure this is an American dish. I don’t think an Italian can come up with this combination. This is like eight 18 too many ingredients, but boy is it good. M penna. [Music] Cook like a chef. Eat like a king. Cayenne Specialty Foods has the ingredients chefs love. Visit chefsmusthave.com and turn your meals into masterpieces.