A while back, I made a Mango Pepper Vodka Sorbet, which of course required a Pepper Vodka. It's pretty easy; 3 Tablespoons cracked black pepper corns in a fifth of vodka, and give it a shake every now and then for a week.

The thing is, the sorbet (which was awesome, by the way) only required 1/4 cup of the vodka, so afterwards I still had nearly a full bottle of vodka, and I don't drink vodka.

At dinner with J&R a couple weeks ago, I mentioned the dilemma of what to do with a bottle of Pepper Vodka I had no intention of drinking. J ran upstairs to the computer room and produced an Emeril Lagasse recipe for a Pasta in Pepper Vodka Sauce.

It's different that other pasta sauces; it uses one shallot and garlic rather than onions as an aromatic and 1/2 cup of heavy cream. Plus the vodka, of course.

I tried it last week and it is a phenominal sauce. The Pepper Vodka brings a damned fine bang to the proceedings, so I thought I'd try it as a pizza sauce this week, using tomato sauce in place of the diced tomatoes.

I expect to be using it as my standard pizza sauce to a while.

Now comes the quest for the perfect crust.