Penne alla Vodka FAIL

Menu: Penne alla Vodka; Peas with Champagne Vinaigrette

Lessons learned:

1. Time for a new penne alla vodka recipe.  Now accepting submissions.
2. I hate angel hair.

I made penne alla vodka for the first time four or five years ago, and it was divine.  It was so good that I took a chance and tripled it (quadrupled it? I can't remember) for my husband's extended Italian family.  That time, it was perfect.  BUT more often than not since then, something goes wrong.  I don't understand this because I do almost the same thing every time, and any adjustments are to try to fix what went wrong the last time.  Once, the sauce still tasted quite alcoholic, so the next time I turned up the heat and the sauce had a burned flavor.  But still I persisted, believing that somehow I could get the delicious pasta sauce I managed those first few times.

My past few attempts have resulted in a singular, persistent problem: the milk separates when I stir in the tomato paste and liquor.  I know this is a common problem when you mix milk with acidic ingredients.  I've tried keeping the heat extremely low, switching the order in which I combine the tomatoes and milk, adding things slowly... it doesn't matter.  Every time, the sauce curdles and looks disgusting, even if the flavor is ok.

To make matters worse, I didn't have any penne.  My choices were angel hair or conchigliette (fat elbows).  I have no idea when or why I purchased angel hair, but I have to hope that I won't be doing it again because I really hate it.  It's hard to handle and doesn't hold any sauce well that I know of.  I also don't know why I chose to make it last night... maybe I had some vague notion of saving the conchigliette for Emily's Homemade Mac 'N Cheese.  Anyway, mistake.  The picture looks ok, but the actual eating experience was not what I was going for.

So I think it's just time to say goodbye to this recipe.  It produced a few very satisfying meals, but I'm sure I can find another one that can measure up, and more reliably.  Here are my requirements: it has to be simple.  I'm not dirtying up my blender to make this dish.  No whole tomatoes; what I loved about the recipe I'm saying goodbye to was the smooth sauce.  And no jarred tomato sauce, either -- that's cheating.

I'm on the lookout.