After you’ve spent a few hours nurturing and crafting your homemade pasta, the last thing you want to do is labor over the sauce.
That never seems to stop me, because I forget how I don’t want to labor over the sauce. So it is usually the last thing I do. As a result, I’ve developed a fairly straight-forward, very flavorful alfredo that I can whip together — last minute — and not ruin the homemade pasta-making effort.
Here’s the recipe:
Fettuccini Alfredo
Ingredients:
- 3 tbsp butter
- 3 garlic clove, minced
- ½ tsp. chili powder
- 1/8 tsp. of nutmeg
- 2 cups heavy cream
- ½ cup grated parmesan cheese
- ¾ cup grated mozzarella
- Splash of fresh lemon
- Freshly chopped Italian Parsley, basil and sage
- Salt to taste
Directions
- Melt butter in medium pan
- Add the garlic, chili powder, nutmeg and sauté for 2 minutes
- Add cream and bring to a simmer, stirring often
- Add parm cheese and let thicken, about 8 minutes
- Stir in mozz cheese, until blended smooth and thick, if too thick add a tbsp of milk
- Finish with splash of lemon; fold in fresh herbs until blended. Serve over pasta immediately
Notes: the mozz isn’t essential. It thickens it and gives a soft contrast to the harsher parm, so I use both. But this sauce is pretty good no matter what you toss in it. For example, you can skip the folded herbs and just mix in pesto into the spices before the cream is added and make a creamy pesto. You can use sun-dried tomatoes. You can use chopped green olive. It’s really fun to experiment.
Enjoy.
EFFinArtist 