So, today was an unplanned snow day. What's a better combination than a snow day and comfort food? Recently I was asked to donate some baked goods to my church's bake sale. It was shortly after Christmas and I figured that a lot of other people, like myself, were still coming down off the Holiday sugar high. I decided to make something a little less traditional. What I donated were meal kits for a fettuccine dinner. Here, I'm going to walk you through the steps for this tasty meal and give you the recipes!
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For the noodles, I have the pasta roller attachment for my KitchenAid mixer. If you don't have access to one of these, there are other types of free standing pasta rollers. You can roll and cut by hand too, but the dough is VERY firm and I know I wouldn't be able to tackle that! I used the basic egg pasta recipe that comes with the pasta roller. It requires: 4 large eggs (I guess that's why it's called EGG pasta!), 1 Tbsp water, 3 1/2 cups sifted flour, 1/2 tsp salt. Combine all the ingredients and mix with the dough hook on your mixer (if you have one) for 2 1/2 minutes. Dough will be very crumbly. You should be able to pinch it and have it stick together.
Dump out the dough on a clean surface and hand kneed for 1-2 minutes. It will form some semblance of a ball. You want the dough to stick enough to form a lump, but dryer is better.
In the above picture, I probably had too much water. Your lump of dough will not be this pretty or round! Let your ball of dough rest for 20 minutes before rolling. Divide the dough into 4 pieces before running through the sheet roller, one piece at a time. Start with the widest setting and run through the sheeter several times until you get a fairly smooth, continuous piece of pasta. Then, decrease the thickness setting one step at a time and run the dough through until you achieve the desired thickness for your pasta. For instance, on the KitchenAid roller, I started with level 1, ran the dough through several times in alternating directions and folded the dough over between each trip through the roller. Once I got the dough to stick together and form a fairly consistent piece, I decreased the thickness setting to 2 and ran the dough through. I repeated this on level 3, 4, 5 and 6. I stopped at level 6. This seemed to be a good thickness for fettuccine noodles.
Once you get your nice, long, thin sheet of pasta dough, cut to manageable lengths. However long you cut the sections will be the length of your finished noodles. Now switch to the fettuccine cutter attachment and run each sheet of pasta through once. You don't need to worry about the noodles as they come out the bottom, just let them fall together. This is where it is really important your dough is dry enough to start with. If you have even the tiniest bit too much water, the noodles will stick together. I kind of "fluff" or toss the noodles periodically to make sure they are not sticking. You can let them dry for an hour or two, or you can put them directly into the fridge or freezer for later use. They can also be cooked immediately. If you cook them fresh, they only take about 3 minutes in boiling water to cook. If they are dried, frozen or refrigerated, they take 4-6 minutes in boiling water to cook.
Now, here are the steps for Alfredo sauce that is M-m good!
I sealed mine in canning jars, so I first boiled the jars and lids to sterilize them.
Note: this does NOT mean you can store them in a pantry or other non-refrigerated area. Due to the high dairy content of the sauce and lack of preservatives, it must be refrigerated until used. I also used a canning funnel and had everything ready to go before I started cooking the sauce.
Assemble your ingredients: 1 1/2 cups milk, 1 1/2 cups whipping cream, 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese, 1/2 cup Romano cheese, 6 jumbo or 7-8 large egg yolks, 1 tsp kosher salt, 1/2 Tbsp fresh ground black pepper, 2 tsp minced garlic.
In a heavy bottom saucepan, heat the cream and milk until simmering. Use low-medium heat. Once simmering, add the two cheeses. Whisk until you feel any lumpiness or gooeyness from the cheese completely melt into the cream. Remove from heat. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks. Next you are going to temper the egg yolks. You need to do this so they don't cook from the heat of the cream when you combine the two. To temper the eggs, slowly add small portions of the hot cream/cheese mixture to the eggs yolks, beating the entire time. I received a Cuisinart immersion/stick blender from my aunt and uncle or Christmas and it is AWESOME! I used it for this part of the recipe and it worked great.
Once you have about half of the hot cream added to the eggs, you can switch and use the blender in the remaining cream and add the (now warm) eggs back into the saucepan. Add the salt, pepper and garlic and bring back to a simmer over medium-low heat. Continue to whisk until sauce starts to thicken. If it starts to boil, stop! It will thicken a little more as it cools. It will thicken very nicely if you make it ahead of time and refrigerate it. It reheats easily in the microwave or on the stove top.
If you are saving for later or giving as gifts, it's nice to have the pasta sauce in sealed jars. Pour the hot Alfredo sauce into the jar, wipe the lip if needed and place a lid snugly on using the included lid ring. As the sauce cools, it will seal the lid. Once cooled, refrigerate. One batch will make a little over 2 pints. If you plan on freezing, put into plastic ziplock bags or containers. This sauce freezes very nicely.
I found cute black wire baskets at the Dollar Tree and a piece of fabric from Joann Fabrics to make it complete. I also made crispy bread sticks, but this post has gotten entirely too long and you can find the recipe here.
I have made a 5x7 recipe card with these recipes that you can download here
Thanks for reading (or skimming!) Have a tasty Wednesday.
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