Tonight’s supper was made with pre-made items out of my freezer and pantry and very little time. The results … amazing
Sorry for the less than stellar plating. I was hungry and the food was getting cold.
Vodka Blush Sauce with Hot Italian Sausages – serves 4
2 cups marinara sauce, smooth or chunky
1 cup whipping cream
2-4 oz Philadelphia cream cheese, diced into 1/2 inch cubes
1 tbsp vodka
4 raw hot** Italian sausages, slice into 1/4 inch rings
1 tsp vegetable oil
** You can use mild sausages if you like but the hot version makes your sauce sing with flavour over the polenta.
In a large saute pan, warm up the oil over medium high heat and add the raw Italian sausages. Fry until the sausage is cooked. Drain extra oil if desired.
Add the vodka and stir well until most of the alcohol has cooked off.
Add the diced cream cheese and 1/2 cup of whipping cream, mashing down the cream cheese until it ‘dissolves’ in the whipping cream.
Add the rest of the whipping cream and the marinara sauce and mix together until everything is warmed through.
Serve immediately over individual bowls or plates of polenta … or cooked pasta if you like.
Polenta – serves 4
3 cups chicken stock
1/2 tsp salt (a bit more if you’re using home made stock)
1 cup fine cornmeal
Bring the stock and salt to a boil in a medium saucepan, then turn the heat down to a simmer. Take the saucepan off the heat, and whisk in the cornmeal in a fine stream stirring continuously while you do so.
Continue cooking the polenta for 5-7 minutes (depends on how impatient you are to eat) while continuing to stir. Taste for seasoning and add more salt if needed. Serve immediately.
Cooking is Fun ... Really!! 
Your mamaliga looks much softer than mine. Mine comes out as one piece, to be cut into slices with a string. Regional differences, I guess?
I can’t get my mamaliga to be firm enough to cut and fry though it does set. When I try to pan-fry it … it melts. It’s probably the cornmeal that I use. It’s pretty finely ground and I use it for cornbread too. It only takes about 5-10 minutes to cook.
I think it is the cornmeal. I don’t use very finely ground one, and I cook it in a cast iron “kazan” with rounded bottom. Then I just flip it, and it comes out as a dome, sort off, and it has to cool completely before being cut.
Kazan … that’s one of my mom’s cooking words from when I was growing up. I thought it meant ‘oven’. Maybe dutch oven now that you describe it. 🙂
I agree about the type of cornmeal.
There is a photo of it in this post:
I have several of them, indifferent sizes. I also explained the origin of the name somewhere, but can’t recall where – sorry!
I couldn’t find the picture of the kazan or at least not enough of one to see what it looks like.
Do you mean the thick sided shiny aluminum pot? It didn’t load until now and I thought it was a bowl. 🙂
It’s cast iron, not aluminium. I scrub them to a shine on the outside. This is the largest one.
Sorry, I googled the term and the one I saw on Amazon was aluminum. Boy you really gave that pot a great shine. 🙂
What do they know from Russian pots on Amazon! All my kazans had been brought from Tashkent after the war; they are older than I.
This seems similar to a kazan.
It is, and even with an old-fashioned handle for cooking over fire. It is cast aluminium, though, rather than cast iron. I’ve never cooked in cast aluminium, so I can’t vouch for quality.
I wasn’t in the market … just curious as to the item. 🙂