Russian pasta?

April 22, 2009 6:28 AM

Help me find a cream-vodka pasta sauce recipe?

I had a pasta dish at a restaurant a little while ago, which was really good, and am having trouble finding a recipe for it. the restaurant called it "Pasta Romanov", and it was a cream-based sauce with vodka and cracked black pepper. It didn't have tomatoes in it. It was rich-tasting, but the flavours were balanced, and I came away from the meal thinking, "mmm! I'd love to make that for a dinner party!"

I've looked online for a recipe, without much success. I've also tried adapting other cream-based sauces, but again, without success.

Has anyone run across such a sauce before, and can they point me in the direction of a good recipe for it??

posted by LN to food & drink (8 comments total)

From wikibooks: Pasta Romanov

Though it looks like this one does have a little bit of tomato paste, but that's just to color it pink. Was yours pink or white?
posted by Grither at 6:34 AM on April 22

Here are a couple which I found via Recipe Puppy.
posted by TedW at 7:12 AM on April 22

From the New York Times: Craig Claiborne's Pasta alla wodka (Pasta with vodka) (1982) and Nigella Lawson's Penne Alla Vodka (2003).
posted by Ery at 7:23 AM on April 22 [1 favorite has favorites]

(Sorry, those both include tomatoes, but Claiborne's contains less.)
posted by Ery at 7:25 AM on April 22

Again, contains a little tomato paste -

Tortiglione alla vodka. I've tried that recipe and it's delicious.
posted by fire&wings at 8:00 AM on April 22

Grither, no it was not at all pink. The primary flavours in it were the pepper, saltiness from parmesan or romano cheese, cream and that slight alcoholic tang that comes from cooking with booze. There were no other ingredients that I could discern - certainly not fish, canned tomatoes or anything like that.

It was really attractive to me, primarly because it was so stripped down a sauce, but tasted so good.

I've attempted it at home, but can't get the ratio of cream, cheese and vodka right. My fiancee can attest that the last batch made us both quite tipsy!
posted by LN at 8:31 AM on April 22 [1 favorite has favorites]

Here is one that doesn't have tomatoes. It contains butter, too, which might be what you are lacking in your sauce.

Another angle is to use a white sauce as the base, instead of cream. Here's a Penne Romanoff recipe...it has some other ingredients you would want to leave out, like the tomatoes.
posted by cabingirl at 8:57 AM on April 22 [1 favorite has favorites]

I've attempted it at home, but can't get the ratio of cream, cheese and vodka right. My fiancee can attest that the last batch made us both quite tipsy!

Proportions aren't the whole issue there. However much vodka you're adding, you should be cooking the sauce long enough after adding it for the alcohol to boil off.

The Claiborne recipe linked above, for instance, contains almost a shot of vodka per serving: 1 cup = 8 oz = 5 1/3 shots. If you skip the step where you bring it back up to a boil after adding the vodka and let it simmer for a minute or two, you'll definitely feel that.
posted by nebulawindphone at 10:12 AM on April 22