Penne with vodka sauce and capicola

This one's an oldie from Eating Well, and the inspiration for making it was the usual: leftover something that I could put in it. This leftover was rotini. I know the title says "penne," but we'd cooked rotini, and that's what we had left over, so that's what we used.

The pluses for this recipe are that it's really lightning fast and comes out pretty tasty. The minus could be that with the red pepper and vodka zing, it may not be something the kiddies go for.

Ingredients were cooked pasta, 2 oz. capicola (pancetta would do as a sub, as would a good bacon, I think), a small onion, three garlic cloves, 0.5 c. vodka, a 28-oz. can of crushed tom-ah-toes, 0.25 c. of half'n'half, 2 tsp Worcestershire, crushed red pepper to your taste (the recipe recommends between 0.25 and 0.5 tsp), chopped basil (if fresh, recipe recommends 0.25 c; I used dried, at about a teaspoon). Pepper and salt to taste. I found that this one didn't require much extra salting.

Put the water for the pasta on to boil if you're not like me and already have some cooked pasta around.

Chop the capicola (or pancetta), the onion, and the garlic. Cook the meat to crisp, then set aside to drain. The recipe doesn't call for oil for the onion and garlic, but I found that they required it, so I added in a lug of olive oil and cooked these on just above medium heat until the onions were transparent and soft.

The fun part, as usual, is adding the alcohol. Jack the heat up to high and pour in the vodka. Enjoy the show, then let it boil until the volume drops by about half. Then add in everything else: cream, tomatoes, half'n'half, red pepper, basil (but see below), reduce the heat, stir, cook for about 10 minutes.

In the original recipe, the recommendation is to serve the sauce over the pasta with the cooked capicola added on top and the basil sprinkled on. I add the basil into the sauce itself, and I also added in the meat. We're not really a "set the table with garnishes" kinda group around here, so I wanted the sauce ready and waiting for when dinner time rolled around.

What we did garnish with was a really nutty, good Parmesan. Add in some rosemary baguette and a good leafy salad, and we had an enjoyable, fancy-seeming dinner involving big words like "capicola" and grownup things like vodka and that bit us back a bit as we ate it, and it only took about 15 minutes to throw together.

Bon appetit.

Homemade limoncello

Here's what you need to know about this limoncello recipe: It takes a reallllly long time to 'finish' (like, months), and it's TOTALLY worth it. Plus, it totally makes me feel like a risque Ma Ingalls. Which, you know, is sort of my life's dream. Score!

Since the lemons in my backyard are just now ripening, I'm starting a batch tomorrow. Well, that...or going to Urgent Care to see if the elephant sitting on the bridge on my nose is actually a sinus infection instead. One of those. (I'm voting for limoncello; Baroy, who is no longer finding my sudden-onset snoring 'cute,' votes for the drugs. He may win. But I'll get to the limoncello sometime before I go back to work next week. It's my promise to myself.)

A little bit about this recipe's provenance: I got it (a couple of years ago) from Cindy at Figs, Lavender and Cheese, and then supplemented it a little bit with other versions of the recipe on the web. Truthfully, though, they all seem to have the same basic ingredients: lemons, alcohol, a simple syrup (or something much like it), and time.

For more info, keep reading.

Limoncello
20 lemons (approximately)
two bottles of vodka, 750 ml each (80 proof or higher)
4 cups sugar
5 cups water

1. For this first step, all you'll need are the lemons, one of the bottles of vodka, and a glass jar to put them in. This last bit was my biggest challenge; the jar I use (above), doesn't quite do it for me.

Here's what you do: Peel the lemons. This takes FOREVER, because you not only want to get as much of the skin as possible, but you also have to try to get as little of the pith (the white stuff underneath the yellow skin) as possible, too. I use a sharp peeler, and a paring knife to scrape off any pith I happen to peel along with the thin skin. Place the peels into the glass jar along with 750 ml of vodka. Cover tightly, and store in a cool, dry, dark place. For 40 days and 40 nights, as if it were an ark and you were Noah. Except, you know, you're not traveling a flooded earth with all the surviving wildlife; you're making lemony booze. Personally, I think that's a lot more fun.

You don't need to do anything to the mixture, though I tend to check on it every week or two, and swirl it around a little, to get the peels on the top further down into the vodka.

(An aside: After I peel the lemons, I juice them, then pour the juice into ice-cube trays until frozen. This way, I have lemon juice for cooking with throughout the year. I mean, if you're going to buy--or in my case, pick--20 or so lemons, you might as well get full use of them!)

2. A few days before you're ready for the next step, make the simple syrup. Every recipe seems to give a slightly different ratio of water to sugar; some do it like a "regular" simple syrup (1:1), but I find even the 4 cups sugar to 5 cups water to yield an extremely sweet liqueur, and am actually thinking of going to 4:6 for this next batch, so I wouldn't want to up the amount of sugar, personally.

To make the syrup, simply add the sugar to the water in a pot, then heat just to boiling, making sure all the sugar has dissolved. Let the mixture cool, then store in the fridge. (I wouldn't make it more than a week in advance; I usually do it the day before I'm ready to move on.)

3. Open the jar and add the syrup and the other 750 ml of vodka. Give it a quick stir to get everything mixed up, then put the jar back in its hidey-hole (mine's in my garage). Cindy's recipe suggests you leave it for another 40 days; some of the other recipes say you can pull it out after two to three weeks. I guess it all depends on how impatient you are for a taste! (What do I do? I generally strain one bottle full at a time--see next step--starting two weeks after I add the vodka and syrup, then let the rest sit for a few weeks until I'm ready to refill the bottle.)

4. When the waiting is over, strain the limoncello through cheesecloth to get rid of the peel. You can store the bottles in your pantry or cupboards, but keep one in the freezer, because this stuff is best when it's icy cold. (Not that I'm not perfectly happy drinking it lukewarm, mind you. But really. Icy cold is the best.)

Not only is it a great summertime apperitif (whatever that means), but it makes an awesome hostess gift. I brought bottles of it with me last September when we had to evacuate to two different friends' houses during the Station Fire, and everyone let us stay! I'm positive it was the booze that tipped the balance.

Do you have a homemade liqueur recipe? My friend John has one for amaretto (or is it kahlua? I think it might be kahlua) that I have to get my hands on and try. Let me know if you've got something to tempt me, too!