Simple Creamy Pasta Sauce

Intro: Simple Creamy Pasta Sauce

This is a really easy recipe to make. It can be done in twenty minutes from a standing start if you can chop faster than me or use ready-grated parmesan.

It also only uses one pot which is a bonus.

INGREDIENTS:-

50g (2 oz) of butter
1/2 a head of garlic
1 bottle white wine
500g (1lb) linguine or fettuccini
200g (7oz) of grated parmesan
1/2 cup cream
1/2 teaspoon salt

STEP 1: Preparation

Break the bulb of garlic into individual cloves, top and tail them, peel off the papery skin and then mince them. I like a bit of visual texture, so I slice the cloves and then push the slices through a square cutter to give 1mm (1/16" inch) cubes of garlic.

Grate the cheese. It's going to be melted through the pasta, so it doesn't have to be perfect, but a finer grate will mean it melts more quickly and mixes more evenly.

If you have a pan which is large enough to take the full length of the pasta lying in a thin layer, then great, but unless it's square there won't be enough depth of liquid to cook. I break the pasta in half which means that it can be laid in a spiral in the pan. If you try to break the entire bundle in one go then bits will get everywhere (interesting physics) but if you do it in four or five handfuls and grip it near the middle then it's really easy and quick.

STEP 2: Liquid

Melt the butter in a large pan.

Turn down the heat and soften the garlic, but don't brown it.

Once the garlic has become translucent pour in the bottle of wine and add some salt.

Bring that all to a brisk boil.

STEP 3: Cooking the Pasta

Check the cooking time listed on the pasta and then dump it in the boiling liquid.

Keep the heat going and stir frantically to stop the pasta from sticking to itself.

After a couple of minutes you can lower the heat (and the franticality of the stirring) but keep an eye on the pan and stir regularly for the duration of the cooking time. The pasta will absorb the wine as it cooks, so make sure it doesn't stick to the pan and burn.

If the wine is all absorbed, then a little water can be added.

STEP 4: Finishing the Sauce

At the end of the cooking time, take the pan off the heat.

Tip in the grated cheese and the cream and get stirring. The aim is to coat every piece of pasta with the cheese before the pasta is too cold to melt it.

Serve with some flat-leaf parsley if your garden is so blessed, and with lots of freshly ground black pepper.

Comments

[AlexD243]

I don't want to start a flamepost or somthing similar, but i've saw some terrible mistakes in this recipie..

First, this is parmesan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parmigiano-Reggiano . It's more different from yours, but this one is the original.

You boiled pasta with wine, it's not a good thing. For the perfect cooking of pasta you have to boil it into water, drain, and then (if you want) ad wine and cheese. The result is more better

If you want to try something similar, please try this..

1) Boil pasta with water and salt

2) Drain about 1 minute before the end of cooking

3) Pour pasta into a bowl with the cheese and and seasoning and also adding two spoon of cooking water to make sure that all will blend well

4) Stir and serve soon, pasta will get cold and the cheese will start becoming sticky

I hope you can enjoy it

[Alex in NZ]

Your comment certainly isn't a flame. I'm sure that my cooking would have any proper cook (or proper Italian) flaming!

Proper parmesan (only tried a couple of times) is amazing. So nutty and flavoursome, but the one I used was a local copy (and cheap).

I did this recipe because I had most of a bottle of wine which I didn't want to drink or throw away. I wasn't sure that it would work, but it was actually delicious. I usually boil pasta in a huge cauldron of water, but I figured that since you can cook rice with just enough to be absorbed, then pasta was worth a try.

Your way sounds good too, and thank you for your comment and for sharing your recipe. This site is about participation (IMHO) so please cook your sauce and take photographs so that you can post them in an 'ible.

I really don't want to disrespect any heritage, and this recipe was just trying an idea. It did actually taste pretty good to me.

[DIY Hacks and How Tos]

Looks delicious. Do you know of any vegan alternatives to butter that will still work? I tried vegetable oil is it just didn't come together right.

[Alex in NZ]

It might be possible to use an olive-oil based butter substitute like Olivio or Olivani. I've fried using that when I've run out of butter and it works OK.

Substituting the cheese and the cream might be more difficult since their physical properties are needed to make the sauce.

Boiling the pasta in the wine so that it is absorbed is really the core of this recipe, so if you just run with that idea it should be possible to devise a vegan sauce. Good luck :-)