Creamy Vodka Sauce

To continue with this month's Italian theme, I wanted to share with you my first (non marinara) pasta sauce attempt.

Leftover pasta from my first homemade ravioli attempt.

I had pasta leftover from my ravioli experiments, so I wanted to have a spectacular sauce to serve it with. Lucky for me I also had a bunch of fresh tomatoes, heavy cream and some vodka that needed to be used up... So I decided to try to make an Easy Vodka Sauce.

The onions cooking in butter and vodka.

This was also the first time I had ever made my own crushed tomatoes. Do you know how it works? Cut the tomatoes in half, and while holding the skin grate it against a cheese grater. You will end up with an empty skin in your hand some fantastic fresh tomato pulp!

Everything but the cream.

When it was simmering, I kept fearing that it was going to burn, but it did fine. It did splatter a bit, but the mess wiped up quickly.

The cream was added (left) and after the completed mixture finished simmering for 30 min (right)

I followed the recipe exactly, but I think that the 10 minutes with vodka in the beginning cooked all of the vodka off, little of the flavor from it remained! (But it was still a good creamy tomato sauce.)

Yum! Too bad this is not healthy...