Fettucine Alfredo

Today’s dinner bell post is more of an inspiration post.  I do include my recipe for Alfredo sauce below, but unlike my past food posts, I’m not going to have a step-by-step meal plan.

I think this is three weeks in a row of one of my “slouch” dinners.  I promise that next week I’ll have a real meal to share with you.  Not that we don’t enjoy these meals any less than we enjoy a full-on Sunday dinner – my family, especially my son, sings the “supper song” (my mother named it that) when we have this – it’s a refrain of “mmm . . .mmm . . . mmm” while eating!  So cute!

In week 1 of my meal plan, I have a generic entry:  pasta and sauce.  When I’m doing my planning, I decide what sauce and pasta I’ll serve.  Here are some of the choices:

1. Fettuccine with Alfredo Sauce
2. Spaghetti with putenesca Sauce
3. Italian Sausage Ravioli with store-bought marinara and/or pesto sauce
4. Linguini with meat sauce

All of these are fairly quick – I usually can have them made and ready to go in the time it takes to boil the water and cook the pasta.  Then, all I need is a side vegetable or a salad, and we are ready to eat.

I know that these sauces are all available to buy in the store (in fact, #3 above is a totally store bought meal), but I swear to you that they are not that difficult to make, and they taste SO much more tasty – for one thing, you can customize them to your tastes.

I’ll be sharing my recipes for putenesca, pesto, and meat sauce in future posts, this week I am going to share my recipe for Alfredo sauce.  I originally started with the recipe that was on the box of fettuccine, but through trial and error, I revised it to the one I share today.  It is one of those recipes which you can find many variations.  The original dish was made famous by Alfredo Di Lelio in his restaurant in Rome.  It was a simple dish of pasta, butter, and Parmesan cheese.  In the United States, it usually contains cream, but there are versions with egg yolk, roux, or cream cheese. 

My version is more basic – I always have the ingredients on hand.  Prep and making the sauce is very simple and only takes ~10 minutes:

That’s it!  Make some steamed brocolli on the side, and voila, you have quick and tasty dinner.

Alfredo Sauce

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Prep Time 2 mins

Cook Time 10 mins

Total Time 12 mins

Servings 6

Ingredients

  

• 2 garlic cloves crushed
• ¼ c butter
• 1 c half-and-half
• ¾ c Parmesan cheese grated

Instructions

 

Directions

• Melt butter in small sauce pan.
• Add garlic and soften – do not burn.
• Add half and half, heat through using whisk to combine.
• Add cheese and whisk constantly over med-high heat until it thickens.
• Add salt and pepper to taste.
• Toss with pasta or serve on the side.