Cookbook:Alfredo Sauce
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| Alfredo Sauce | |
|---|---|
| Category: | Sauce recipes |
| Servings: | 6 persons |
| Time: | 15 minutes |
| Difficulty: |  |
Cookbook | Recipes | Cuisine of Italy | Pasta Recipes
Fettuccine Alfredo is a dish of fettuccine pasta with a sauce made of cream, butter and cheese. In popular American cooking the cream preparation is considered to be a sauce, though this is not the Italian convention.
Alfredo Sauce is rich but simple. Because it is simple you can create many variations. You can add such elements as green peas, asparagus tips, lemon zest, blanched bacon or proscuitto, shrimp, and even bite-sized pieces of smoked salmon. Pretty much anything other than beef or game can be added to this basic sauce.
The tricks to making a good Alfredo are gentle cooking and a proper balance of ingredients. The sauce should be just thick enough to coat the pasta without pooling on the bottom of the plate, but it should not be so thick as to be glue-like. The sauce can be made in the time that it takes to bring a pot of water to the boil and cook the pasta.
Fettuccine Alfredo should be served immediately, because as it cools the large amount of fat in the sauce will congeal too much. If it cannot be served immediately it should be made thinner in the pan than you want it when it's plated and presented.
This recipe will sauce one pound of pasta and serves 6 as a first course.
[edit] Ingredients
- 1¾ cups (400 ml) heavy cream
- 6 tbs. unsalted butter
- 8.5 ounces (240 grams) grated parmesan cheese or asiago cheese
- 1 tsp. salt
- fresh-ground black pepper
- pinch of fresh-ground nutmeg
[edit] Preparation
- Combine 1¼ cups (300ml) cream and the butter in a sautéing pan large enough to accommodate the sauce and later the pound of pasta. Heat over a low flame, stirring frequently, until the butter is melted and the cream comes to a bare simmer. Remove the pan from the heat once the butter is evenly incorporated into the cream.
- Cook the pasta, draining it a little before it reaches the al dente stage. The pasta should be slightly undercooked before being added to the sauce because it will continue to cook while the sauce is being finished.
- Drain the pasta and add it to the pan, along with the remaining ½ cup (100ml) of cream, the cheese, the salt, the nutmeg, and several grinds of the pepper mill.
- Heat the pasta and sauce over a low flame, tossing continuously, until the cheese melts into the sauce and the sauce thickens slightly, about one to two minutes.
[edit] Notes
- Alfredo Di Lelio, for whom the dish is named, was a Roman innkeeper. Between the 1910s and the 1950s he owned a popular restaurant named Alfredo all'Augusteo in Piazza Augusto Imperatore in the center of the city.
- The original name of the dish, created in 1914, was Fettuccine al triplo burro (Fettuccine with triple butter). He served it with golden forks given to him by Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks.
- Fettuccine is the traditional pasta for Alfredo and its variations because the broad noodles provide just the right platform for the rich cream and cheese.
- Fresh egg pasta is greatly preferred over dried pasta for cream and cheese sauces because the sauce clings more readily to fresh pasta than it does to dried.
