Fettucine Alfredo

I'm not usually one to crave fettucine alfredo. I always think about my caloric intake when I consider it, and wind up with a lighter choice. I've played with it a bit on the blog, and make it on occasion with melted butter, flour, heavy cream, and of course, parmesan cheese.

I learned recently from a cooking social media account that the fettucine alfredo I knew was all wrong. It's not about heavy cream, but the sauce should actually be pretty light, a mixture of melted butter, parmesan, and starchy water from cooking the pasta.

We usually dump this water, but it can be useful in many recipes. I turn to cornstarch, flour, or tapioca to thicken gravies and sauces sometimes, but when you make noodles, the water is left with the cooked off starch - a perfect, ready to go thickener. The less water you cook with, the more condensed the starch water.

But before we get into the recipe, we should talk about fettucine Alfredo. Attributed to a chef and restauranter named Alfredo di Lelio, the recipe was created in Rome in the early 1900s. His wife had recently given birth to their son and needed something easy on the stomach. Alfredo made some homemade pasta in a simple sauce, something she both loved and recommended it be featured in the restaurant. Popularity spread to Hollywood after celebrities tried and loved it, experiencing Alfredo's unique showmanship as he prepared the dish right at the table.

Of course, we have diluted this dish over time to the point of being a rich, heavy, cream sauce, rather than the smooth sauce of over 100 years ago. I'm happy to have learned and made this. 

It starts as all pasta dishes do, with cooking the pasta. I boiled fettucine in just enough water to cover it; I have a habit of using more than I need, but as noted above, it will dilute the starch you need. 

Once the pasta was cooked (al dente or to personal preference), I removed the pasta from the water, setting aside about 2 cup of the water to slightly cool. I chopped the butter into smaller pieces and tossed the pasta in it to melt it and coat the noodles. Of course, you can up or down scale this recipe with ease, using less ingredients and stirring until the texture is right.

I spooned in some of the warm starchy water, then began to slowly add in the parmesan cheese, stirring frequently. To get the finer pieces, I cut a block of parmesan into pieces and used my small food processor. This saved me some grating work and got the consistency just right for melting quickly.

As the cheese melted, I'd stir in some more, and kept my pasta water nearby if I needed to dilute a little more.

By eating time, I had a beautiful, creamy pasta sauce and let me tell you: it was fantastic!

Best Alfredo sauce I've ever had.

I had to sprinkle a little extra parm on top, just for effect.

It was, indeed, easy on the stomach, and I still can't believe how good such a simple recipe was. I've been learning more about pasta quality recently, too, and made sure to get one of the better packages available. Quality is everything.

Fettucine Alfredo Recipe

Ingredients:

8 ounces fettuccine noodles (half of a standard package)

3 ounces parmesan cheese, finely grated (about 1/2-3/4 cup)

4 tablespoons butter, cut into 1/2 to 1 inch pieces

1 cup pasta water

Pepper, as desired

Instructions:

Cook pasta in water according to package directions, using just enough liquid to submerge the pasta. In a food processor, grate parmesan until fine. Remove pasta from water and place in a large bowl. Add butter and mix until melted. Add a few spoonfuls of the reserve pasta water (let it cool slightly), then slowly stir in parmesan cheese, allowing it to melt. Add more pasta water to thin, if desired. Add pepper to taste.