Fettucine Alfredo aka fancy mac 'n cheese -- a #recipe from @LeslieBudewitz

LESLIE BUDEWITZ:  Back when I was right out of school and teaching myself to cook, I bought a copy of the Sunset Italian Cookbook. 

I’d worked in bookstores and knew the series to be reliable—the list of sources and contributors to this one is filled with Italian names, including food and wine research from the Italian Trade Commission office in San Francisco. Forty years later, the pages are stained and scribbled on. Some are loose. It’s easy to tell my favorites, and there are many—though there are still plenty of recipes I haven’t tried. The stuffed mushrooms are a go-to for us. My version of the fettucine with minted tomato sauce, aka Fettucine with Demented Tomato Sauce, shows up in Death Al Dente, my first Food Lovers’ Village mystery, and the Green Bean and Potato Salad goes to a picnic with Erin and her family in Treble at the Jam Fest. 

The first time I made this for my visiting parents, my dad spotted me peeking at the recipe repeatedly—it’s easy, but I was new at this—and called it “the map.” Later, he teasingly called it fancy mac ‘n cheese. But he ate every bite.

You will, too. 

Back then, I didn’t know about saving some of the pasta water, and the book doesn’t suggest it. It’s helpful, to keep the sauce loose and any leftovers from cooling into a cheesy lump. Fancy folk use white pepper instead of black; I don’t bother – I never replaced the jar I dropped. Trust me, white pepper is even harder to clean up than black, and just as likely to make you sneeze. 

If you'd like to add peas, mushrooms, or cooked chicken, this recipe is ideal. Add frozen peas to the pasta water in the last minute or two of cooking; they'll finish cooking as the pasta drains. Saute sliced mushrooms in butter and oil while the pasta is cooking; add them in the last stir, just before serving. Add the cut-up cooked chicken in the last cream-and-cheese stage, so it gets thoroughly heated. 

Serve with a green salad, a loaf of crusty bread, and a glass of crisp white wine. 

PS: I finally figured out how to embed a PDF of the recipe so you can print it easily. Scroll down to the 💕 for the link. 

Fettucine Alfredo (adapted from Sunset Italian Cookbook (1981)) 

8 ounces fettucine

6 tablespoons butter

1-1/2 cups heavy cream

1 cup grated Parmesan

salt

black pepper (or white if you have it)

ground nutmeg

parsley or basil, cut in ribbons, for serving (optional)

Bring a salted pot of water to a boil. Cook the pasta until al dente. Save a cup of pasta water. Drain pasta. 

In the same pot, melt the butter. Add ½ cup of cream and boil quickly, until slightly thickened. Reduce heat to medium-low; add the pasta and stir gently. Add an additional ½ cup of cream and ½ cup of cheese. Mix gently, with a lifting motion. Repeat with remaining cream and cheese, and mix gently. If the sauce gets too thick, add a tablespoon of the pasta water, and more if needed. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg to taste. Divide into bowls and top with basil or parsley. Serve immediately.

Makes 4-6 servings. Leftovers keep nicely; I like to add a little of the reserved pasta water to the pasta once it's in its refrigerator container, to keep the sauce from solidifying too much. You can also add a little water when you reheat the pasta, if you need to. 

Buon appetivo! What's your favorite pasta dish? Do you have a fun story about cooking for your parents?

💕 Click here for a free printable PDF! 

TO ERR IS CUMIN 

A Spice Shop Mystery (Seventh St. Books, coming July 16, 2024 in paper, ebook, and audio)

From the cover: 

One person’s treasure is another’s trash. . .

Pepper Reece, owner of the Spice Shop in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, wants nothing more than to live a quiet life for a change, running her shop and working with customers eager to spice up their cooking. But when she finds an envelope stuffed with cash in a ratty old wingback left on the curb, she sets out to track down the owner.

Pepper soon concludes that the chair and its stash may belong to young Talia Cook, new in town and nowhere to be seen. Boz Bosworth, an unemployed chef Pepper’s tangled with in the past, shows up looking for the young woman, but Pepper refuses to help him search. When Boz is found floating in the Ship Canal, only a few blocks from Talia’s apartment, free furniture no longer seems like such a bargain.

On the hunt for Talia, Pepper discovers a web of connections threatening to ensnare her best customer. The more she probes, the harder it gets to tell who’s part of an unsavory scheme of corruption—and who might be the next victim.

Between her quest for an elusive herb, helping her parents remodel their new house, and setting up the Spice Shop’s first cooking class, Pepper’s got a full plate. Dogged by a sense of obligation to find the rightful owner of the hidden treasure, she keeps on showing up and asking questions.

One mistake, and she could find herself cashing out. . .

Available at Amazon  * Barnes & Noble  * Books-A-Million * Bookshop.org * And your local booksellers!

Leslie Budewitz is the author of the Spice Shop Mysteries set in Seattle's Pike Place Market, and the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries, set in NW Montana. As Alicia Beckman, she writes moody, standalone suspense, most recently Blind Faith. She is the winner of Agatha Awards in three categories: Best Nonfiction (2011), Best First Novel (2013), and Best Short Story (2018). Her latest book is Between a Wok and a Dead Place, the 7th Spice Shop mystery.  

A past president of Sisters in Crime and national board member of Mystery Writers of America, Leslie lives in northwest Montana with her husband, a musician and doctor of natural medicine, and their cat, an avid bird-watcher.

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