Fettucine Alfredo

Continuing with the theme of not-real recipes, this is how I make fettucine alfredo, more or less embarrassingly jacked from Everyday Italian. Obviously, the amount of fat is massive, so you probably shouldn't eat it very often. Fresh pasta is incredibly important, be it homemade or store-bought. Also, you are not allowed to substitute cheese in this recipe. Parsley is optional and likely discouraged by purists. There is no reason to use half-and-half; all this means is longer time evaporating the liquid out of the sauce. If you want less fat, make less sauce, but I question what you are doing making alfredo and trying to limit fat at all.

1 pound fresh fettucine (recipes follow)
1 stick butter
1 cup heavy cream
nutmeg to taste
pepper to taste
1 cup (at least!) grated parmigiano reggiano
zest of 1 lemon
juice of half lemon
salt to taste
parsley to garnish

1) Make pasta (recipes follow). Boil and salt pasta water. Put butter and cream into large skillet on medium-low. Do not brown the butter! Do not add stupid junk like garlic!

2) Whisk butter and cream togther and continue periodic whisking so the sauce doesn't curdle. Bubbles are bad, steam is good. Add some nutmeg and black pepper; this will taste how it smells, if you want to do things to taste. Add cheese and zest, check for salt now because the cheese was salty.

3) When water reaches boil, add uncooked pasta. Spin it around the pot once or twice. Add zest to alfredo sauce. Remove pasta after about 90 seconds - before it reaches al dente, and add to sauce. Mix pasta with sauce with a fork, tongs, whatever. Add lemon juice, chopped parsley if desired, and mix again.

4) Plating: Dump on a plate with yet more cheese and pepper. A pretty presentation would be to wind it around a fork and then slide this relatively ordered pasta onto the plate. Add parsley on the sides, cheese on top.
Drink: Fat coats the tongue and makes it hard to taste wines. So nothing expensive! Chianti or zinfandel would be good, chianti probably better. I could also see something like a pinot noir with lots of berries performing well. If you don't like tannins, this is a chance to drink a tannin-heavy wine and avoid the tannins.


Pasta (note: this pasta isn't super-suitable for stuffed pasta. you should use Thomas Keller's recipe for that. Link.)

Two eggs per cup of flour. 1 pound of pasta is probably 2 cups of flour, but I don't really know.

Whisk flours together, if combining. Make a mound of flour with a volcano hole and crack eggs into said crevasse. Break the egg yolks with fingers and mix eggs together, during which time some of the volcano will start to get mixed in with the eggs, forming a slurry. Gradually incorporate the whole mountain, and knead until the dough comes together and is smooth. Cover with a damp towel or wrap. Let rest for 30 minutes. Then send it through your pasta maker (penultimate settings is usually good for your final thickness).

Quinoa with shrimp scampi (or mushrooms) and artichokes

Okay, so this isn’t actually a real recipe, but it’s super-easy, I make it all the time, and I took pictures of it. I actually prefer the dish with oyster mushrooms as opposed to shrimp, but those are out of season right now, which sucks because I ordinarily eat lots of mushrooms. You would also not do a spice rub on the mushrooms. I also use olive oil usually with the mushrooms, but since I was doing shrimp, I decided a scampi would be a good idea as its ingredients are also good friends with artichokes. And there's no reason not to use wheat berries or barley instead of quinoa, although they do take longer to cook. (Disclaimer: I was too lazy to look up a scampi recipe, so it’s possible that it involves more than garlic and butter, but I doubt it.)Anyway…

Ingredients:

1 cup uncooked red quinoa
1.5 cups water

6 baby artichokes
1 cup oyster mushrooms
1.5-2 tbsp butter (actually, try to use as much as you are comfortable using)
2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
Half a lemon
White wine if desired
Chopped scallions to taste
Chopped parsley to taste
Parmigiano reggiano to taste

Quarter pound of thawed shrimp (frozen shrimp weigh twice as much as thawed)
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp caraway seeds
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 dried hot chile plus seeds
¼ tsp salt

Rinse the quinoa under cold water to wash off the dust, which can be bitter. Place into 1.5 cups of simmering covered water. Cook time should be about 10 minutes. If you have extra water at the end, just keep cooking until it evaporates as quinoa can take the beating. Similarly, just add extra water if quinoa is not tender.


While the quinoa is cooking, melt the butter and put in the garlic. Try really hard to not brown the garlic. Prep artichokes. (I’ve included a picture of a before & after.) First, chop off the stem and pointy top. Next, peel off the outer rings of leaves until the remaining leaves are tender and probably a pale yellowish-green. These will oxidize incredibly quickly, so if you care about things like that, you should dunk them in a water-vinegar/lemon solution to prevent browning. I usually just squeeze some lemon on top. Anyway, halve all of these. Put into butter/garlic. Add your lemon juice or white wine or whatever if you feel like it. Also add your parsley stems. Check seasoning.

Toast the spices (except the chile). Grind. Toss with peeled, deveined, de-tailed shrimp. When artichokes are pretty close to done, throw the shrimp in the pan. You know the drill, when one side turns pink, flip. Cook a tiny bit more, and remove from heat.

Plating:
Serve over greens, such as baby arugula or watercress, if desired. Basically, toss the quinoa with the artichoke/shrimp mixture. Add chopped scallions and thin slices of parmigiano reggiano cheese. Squeeze a lemon on top. Also some olive oil wouldn’t hurt, to say nothing of black pepper. As you can see, the plating is not exactly the most attractive thing in the world; this is really food to pack in a lunch.

Drink:
NOT Fox Glove 2007 Chardonnay! Really though, super-acidic white wines are basically the only wines that consistently stand up to artichokes or asparagus, so you should go with a pinot grigio or sauvignon blanc. Soave wine from Italy also supposedly works, but the alcohol is usually so out of control on those that I find them gross.