FatDave’s Triple-Bypass Alfredo and The Secret to Making Good Pasta

OK, gather this stuff for the sauce:

• 1 stick real butter. I reccomend FatDave’s You’d Better Fucking Believe It’s Butter brand. If you have a choice, go with unsalted butter, if you don’t, no biggie.
• 1 tbsp. fresh garlic. Garlic powder and garlic salt go on bread only. You don’t have to dice cloves, get one of those handy jars.
• 1 qt. Half and Half
• 8 oz. grated parmesan. One of those plastic jars like you buy all the time is exactly 8 oz.
• Nutmeg.
• 1 tbsp. or so of corn starch
• Water

OK, this first part is kind of emergency preparation, but it’s good to be ready unless you don’t mind runny alfredo. Take a small bowl (small as you got, or maybe even a small cup) and put the corn starch in it. Slowly add cold water and stir. You want it just to the point that it’s runny, not pasty. Set that shit aside.

Take the lid off the parmesan and leave it off.

Melt the butter in a saucepan, lowish heat. Throw in a tablespoon or so of the garlic, more if you like garlic as much as I do. Stir until garlic bits just start to turn brown.

Add most of the half & half. Hold back a half-cup or so in case you need to thin the sauce at some point. Immediately start stirring.

Seriously, don’t stop stirring. We’re gonna bring it to a boil, but it burns easily, so no more than half-heat and keep stirring. If you’ve got a double-boiler, use it, but who the fuck has a double-boiler? So just stir. Have somebody call the babysitter and ask “Is he stirring the sauce?”

Once that boils (as in “it has a lot of steam coming off of it” not “It’s bubbling all over the fucking place”), dump in all of the parmesan while you continue to stir. That’s why we took the lid off earlier. What, you left the foil on the jar, dumbass? FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! THE CREAM’S GOING TO BURN!! OK, it’s not that bad, I just like playing up the “keep stirring” bit.

So, now that you’ve added the cheese, keep stirring until the cheese is melted and creamy. It shouldn’t take long, and if you got the cream hot enough you can actually turn off the heat as soon as you’ve mixed in the cheese.

Now, bear in mind that this stuff is going to thicken a bit as it cools, so what we’re shooting for is “a little runnier than I’d like to eat it”. So, does it seem too thick? Add a little more half & half. Too runny? Pour in just a little (a little goes a long way) of the water/cornstartch mixture.

Mix in a pinch of nutmeg, pour it over fettucine noodles and serve. Optionally top with steamed broccoli or chicken slices.

Short version: melt butter, brown garlic, add half & half, bring to boil (stirring constantly), stir in cheese until melted. A lot easier than I made it sound, huh?

And save the extra sauce! Refrigerates to a solid, microwaves back to a thick liquid.

Thing about those noodles though…. There’s a secret to making good noodles.

First of all, don’t use fucking egg noodles. Use semolina noodles. Most real pasta shapes are semolina, so not too tough really. Just don’t use those egg noodles that have been sitting in your cupboard since the day after thanksgiving when you made turkey and noodles. In fact, make sure it’s fettucine noodles, OK? Maybe angel hair, but don’t go pouring alfredo on spaghetti, you fucking savage. Any sauce is good on fettucine though. It is the O Negative of pasta.

And you know how to get your noodles done right? Boil them until they bend easily, then put a lid on the pot and turn off the heat. They’ll be done perfectly in 5 to 10 minutes, just long enough to wrap up the sauce.

OK, but semolina noodles and turning off the heat aren’t the real secret. The real secret is that when you boil your noodles, you boil them in in just water. No salt, no oil, just plain old water (6 cups hydrogen, 3 cups oxygen). That other shit just keeps the starch from sticking to the noodles. Starchy noodles are good. Not only do they taste better, the sauce sticks to them better. Starch sticks to noodles, sauce sticks to starch, ergo sauce sticks to noodles. And the funny thing is, every cookbook I’ve ever seen, every cook I’ve ever talked to, says to either put salt, oil, or salt and oil in the water. I think it’s a conspiracy. The master pasta cooks want to keep the secret to themselves, so they lie to people and tell them to put oil in the water. Well, I’m just a programmer, so what the fuck do I care? Water, noodles, then just leave it alone already.