The best meals to toss on the table for company are the ones which sound impressive, but which are actually very easy to prepare. Â Pasta Alfredos have a certain mystique about them, but are actually far easier to prepare than pasta with red sauce.
Here is the basic recipe for 4 – it multiplies perfectly and I have done it for up to as many as 32.
¼ lb (1 stick) unsalted butter (never use salted)
1 clove garlic
½ cup heavy cream
¼ – ½ cup shredded Parmesan, Romano, or Asiago cheese
½ lb fettuccini (cooked in heavily salted water ~ 10 minutes)
The sauce takes a little longer than the pasta, so get the water boiling then start the sauce.
Melt the butter in a heavy skillet over med-low heat. The key is to cook all the water out of the butter. Otherwise, it won’t bind right and tends to clump or separate later. (This stage is a lot like making ghee.) Let the butter bubble lightly but never boil until it is completely clear and golden in color. Crush garlic with the side of a knife then chop finely. Cook a couple of minutes until you can smell the garlic above the pan. Raise the heat a bit and just as it begins to froth add the cream. When it begins to bubble again, reduce the heat so that you keep light bubbling in the center of the pan. Start the pasta about now. Stir the sauce now and then to make sure it binds and the sauce cooks evenly. Reduce by about 1/3 rd until the consistency is smooth and the sauce has thickened slightly. Dust the top with a liberal amount of freshly ground pepper. (I like to use the mélange that has several different colors of peppercorns, but regular black is fine also.) Boost up the heat until the mixture just starts to boil and add the cheese. Stir briskly to melt and bind the cheese quickly, then turn the heat down low. If using the carbonara addition (see below), add it now. Drain the pasta and add about 2/3rds of it to the sauce. Toss briskly to coat the noodles, then keep adding a bit at a time and tossing until all the sauce is soaked up and all the noodles are evenly coated. You may have a bit of pasta left over.
Tip into serving dish and dust the top with ¼ tsp of nutmeg. Have a little extra grated cheese to top it with.
Carbonara Addition –
If you can find good peppered pancetta, use it. Otherwise, thick sliced peppered bacon works just fine.  Figure about ¼-½ slice of pancetta or ½ – 1 slice of bacon per person. Cut the bacon into ½ inch chunks and fry in a heavy skillet until all the grease is fried out but the bacon isn’t quite yet crisp. Remove with slotted spoon and drain on paper towel. Use about 1 green onion per 2 slices of bacon or 1 slice pancetta. Slice fine and sauté in olive oil until transparent. Mix with the bacon and set aside until it is time to add to the Alfredo. As soon as the cheese is melted in the Alfredo sauce, add the carbonara, reduce the heat, and toss to coat the noodles and distribute the meat.  The carbonara is mostly to add flavor, and all you want is a small chunk or two per bite of pasta.
If you are using a large decorative skillet to make the Alfredo, it can go directly to the serving table in it and allow your guests to serve themselves buffet style.
Complement with a tossed, or even better Caesar, salad, a loaf of crusty sourdough french bread with real butter, and a dry white wine.
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{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
Needless to say, men should master these recipes (and invent their own), so that :
The 2nd or 3rd date is at YOUR place, where you turn her into a chef’s assistant while you cook, and then later seduce her to levels of ecstasy she did not think possible.
There is NO need to buy dinner for a woman at a restaurant before the two of you have had sex. That is the first ‘test’ you, as a man, need to pass.
I repeat : NO need. Learn to cook well (something few women know how to do in this day and age). Get her to come to your house for the 2nd and 3rd date (Mystery’s 7-hour rule). Make her happy.
Yummy! . So… let me know what time dinner is being served and I’ll drop around with a good Aussie Sauvignon blanc
TFH, you are right about not having to buy dinner at a restaurant, to impress.
On my first date with my wonderful hubby, he stuffed and baked a succulent fish, that he had caught himself! Bellismo!
We had a couple of glasses of wine. As I was worried about driving home and being over the limit, I decided to phone for a cab.( Soon to be) Hubby offered me the spare room , to save the expense of a cab. He gave me a peck on the cheek, and then retired to his own room..
I was hooked.
A year later we were married.
14th wedding anniversary comin’ up next week.
With the recipes you and Welmer are sharing, I might have to cease my mourning over the end of Gourmet magazine this month.
The best meals to toss on the table for company are the ones which sound impressive, but which are actually very easy to prepare.
I agree! Lasagna and my grandma’s baked meatballs are two recipes I use all year round for entertaining, as I can put them together the day before and then bake them the day off. Both can also be frozen as well, allowing me to pop something out of the freezer for a meal to share, for just us, or to drop off to somebody in need.
Many desserts and appetizers can also be frozen, as can homemade ingredients to make basic meals extra special, such as various types of stock. Cookie dough too. I roll mine into appropriate sized balls and then place them into a baggy. We’re never more than twelve minutes away from homemade cookies here.
I already have a fair portion of our big Thanksgiving dinner prepared and in the freezer, making the crazy cooking fest a bit easier at the last minute.
The freezer is the single man’s best invention.
Make some lasagna etc, cut it into single man portions, and freeze what is left over. That is an easy meal, nuked in the microwave, for several days in reserve.
I have a real problem buying groceries for one. It is just not effective at all, unless the freezer is put into use. Too much stuff goes rotten too fast with one person, or, one tends to overeat. The “apartment deepfreeze” is a great invention, and commercial outlets ought to start pandering to us single folk, who are daily contemplating between Safeway or Subway. The cost is about the same.
fedrz –
I know what you mean. I’m a good cook but I find I often buy stuff that I never make before it goes bad.
Subway’s lower prices were a genius marketing gimmick that really paid off for them. Subways are everywhere and they are always busy. I probably eat at Subway at least 4 meals per week. 6in Chicken breast, Honey Oat bread (highest fiber), Pepper Jack, L/T, Banana peppers, Jalapenos, S/P, O/V. I can order something reasonably healthy and be out the door for less than almost anywhere else, less than $5. I honestly think it’s one of the more positive phenomenons to come out of our consumer culture.
I have a real problem buying groceries for one. It is just not effective at all, unless the freezer is put into use. Too much stuff goes rotten too fast with one person, or, one tends to overeat.
Even feeding just two can be a challenge, I found both when it was just my husband and myself and when he was deployed and it was just my daughter and I. (Okay so that last one was more like feeding 1.5). Many of the best deals for food are/were impractical unless I made something for the freezer or portioned out the food.
Several years ago I won a cookbook in a raffle called “Don’t Panic Dinner is in the Freezer” and have found this to be a considerable help in saving money and not wasting food. The recipes are still for a larger family, but I simply pack/prepare the food in smaller containers. The book also provides information on how to adjust your own tried and true recipes to provide the best freezer quality. Sometimes an ingredient might need to be swapped out for something else or left out until you are reheating the meal. Many “once a month cooking” websites can also be helpful.
There is also a nice cookbook called “Cooking For Two” by Bruce Weinstein that has been useful when cooking for just myself when my husband was away and we didn’t yet have our daughter, as well as now. Everything from quick weeknight dinners to leisurely weekend meals to scaled for small portion desserts can be found in this book.
Great stuff, but I can feel my arteries clog just looking at the picture.
Wish I could still eat like that…
Yup, Jack,
I eat at Subway lots, and have for years. At the very least, it is “healthy” fast food. Entirely different from Rotten Ronnies or other said venues, which will rot your body from the inside out if you eat their food daily. And trust me, guys. I know some people where this is literally the case. I know one guy who works at the mill who ate A & W take out every lunch hour for, like a decade. His doctor told him to STOP, as it was harming his liver and kidneys worse than his chronic drinking… according to the story.
Subway is at the very least, wholesome food – if you choose it to be. And it is dirt cheap! I couldn’t keep all of those veggies fresh in fridge long enough.
I eat there often, a few times a week, for at least the past decade.
Are you in a house, or an apartment, Hestia?
If I had a house, I would splurge on a big deep freeze, and perhaps even deprive the odd moose of his life.
But in an apartment, they have started making small little deep freezes, which is far more accomodating than the big grocery stores are offering to us mooks.
I don’t mind cooking, but cooking stupidly is, well, stupid.
Sounds great, but with all that butter, cream, and cheese, alfredos are best consumed sparingly and then in small portions.
On the other hand, I have yet to try a chicken/veal marsala or piccata in any restaurant better than mine (although, admittedly it took me a while to perfect them). Those can be made with olive oil, which is a lot safer than butter, even if just as fattening.
Geez, Zed…all that trouble when you can stick some Stouffer’s in the microwave?
To paraphrase a past president, (spoken with two fingers upheld and a wavy jaw), “I am not a cook.”
Seriously, it looks and sounds delicious.
That looks fabulous.
Think of it as gastronomic “foreplay”, Connie.
One of my all time favorites Zed, Merci.
As fedrz and sesamibi mentioned, that recipe is beyond the pale high fat.
The challenge in cooking is to find flavor, without the fat.
fedrz- Are you in a house, or an apartment, Hestia?
We have a house now and recently purchased a proper deep freezer to join our new food storage shelves out in the garage. No more stashing the home canned jars of food and buckets of dried goods under the bed and in every spare cupboard space!
When we were in apartments, we managed to fit an upright freezer into whatever odd spare space we happened to have at that particular house. One time we had an outlet in the outdoor storage unit and used this for our freezer and additional food storage. Another time the freezer called a walk-in closet home. I’m sure people who knew must have thought we were nuts, but that’s a small price to pay for the money and time that was saved.
Spaghetti Carbonara was one of those meals I decided I wanted to have down cold before I even moved out. Guys love bacon, pasta, and cheese. Girls fall over when you cook something that looks like Italian restaurant fare. Best of all, make it two times and you can’t mess it up. It’s the culinary ace up the sleeve. Learn it.
I have to say kudos for posting an Alfredo recipe with a real cream reduction sauce rather than that crime against culinary good taste–the bechamel. Nothing worse than going to what you think is a nice restaurant only to be served a pile of pasta smothered in semi-congealed, floury glop.
People see cream reduction and think “OMG FAT!” and think a roux-thickened sauce is so much healthier, when the reality is you need less than half the amount of real cream sauce to get good flavor, and the texture is so much more pleasing.
Gents,
I love to cook, and have spent a goodly amount of time teaching my now-grown sons how to cook good food for themselves. Not to blow my own horn (well, not too loudly anyway), but I really think part of the reason I got divorced was because I was an infinitely better cook than my ex.
Anyway, if any guy wants to learn how to do this, I always recommend that they check out Alton Brown’s show Good Eats on Food Network. He doesn’t just give you recipes and techniques, he delves into the science behind cooking. You have no idea how that helps in boosting one’s own skills. He also dispenses with a lot of myths that pass themselves off as fact.
By way of an example, deep fat frying is not unhealthy for you, if it is done right which most people do not. It’s actually a very efficient medium for cooking foods thoroughly. And, we’re not talking about using new age-y oils like Canola, we are talking about cooking in ladle-fulls of Crisco. Most people tend to over-crowd the pan with food, and that causes the temperature of the oil to go down. When that happens, the counter-pressure of the escaping water via steam also goes down, and the oil can seep into the food. That’s why food gets greasy when you fry it. Keeping the oil hot will ensure that the steam escaping counters the oil trying to get into the food, and this is done by being patient and not trying to cook too much at once. Also, placing the cooked food onto an effective draining rack will further decrease the chance of the finished product sitting in it’s own grease.
He once fried up two whole chickens, and measured the amount of oil he ended up with at the end, compared to how much he started with. All told, there was about a tablespoon of oil that got absorbed by the food, and about 2-3 tablespoons that ended up dripping off the final product. That’s not too shabby, considering the horror with which people regard frying.
I have about 200 episodes of his show archived to DVD, and they are an endless source of information and learning, not to mention damn good recipes. I encourage all guys to check his show out, and start learning some stuff your mom can’t teach you. I promise you won’t regret it.