Failed Alfredo
Sometimes my cooking experiments are complete failures. Such was the case with my first attempt ever at an alfredo sauce from scratch. I hadn't done much research -- I was just following a recipe that'd been posted on LJ -- and didn't know the cardinal rule for making alfredo sauce: don't let it boil. If you let it boil, it separates, creating butter and fat solids, and is basically unsalvagable after that.
In the above picture, it was still in the very early 'warming up' stages, so it looks fine. If only I'd kept it there, I would have been okay. But I thought that it needed to bubble a little more, so I turned up the heat and brought it to a boil. Big mistake. Sigh. I added in the parmesan cheese at the end anyway, hoping that it would somehow save it (it didn't). I ended up drizzling my pasta with some of the 'sauce' anyway, and the flavor was super delicious. I can only imagine how good it would have been if the texture and consistency had been right.
The good news is, I've discovered a great linguine from Trader Joe's. They have different kinds of linguine, and I give a big thumbs up to the garlic and basil one. (I bought another kind also, but can't remember the type, and in any case haven't tried it yet.)
There's the packaging for it. It does cost quite a bit more than the regular pasta ($1.99 for 8 oz., when you can get twice that of the plain kind for $0.99 -- however at this particular TJ's I couldn't find any plain long pasta except for spaghetti and angel hair), but it's quite good.
Here it is cooked, a bit past al dente as I was so busy trying to save the sauce that I left the pasta boiling a little too long.
In the above picture, it was still in the very early 'warming up' stages, so it looks fine. If only I'd kept it there, I would have been okay. But I thought that it needed to bubble a little more, so I turned up the heat and brought it to a boil. Big mistake. Sigh. I added in the parmesan cheese at the end anyway, hoping that it would somehow save it (it didn't). I ended up drizzling my pasta with some of the 'sauce' anyway, and the flavor was super delicious. I can only imagine how good it would have been if the texture and consistency had been right.
The good news is, I've discovered a great linguine from Trader Joe's. They have different kinds of linguine, and I give a big thumbs up to the garlic and basil one. (I bought another kind also, but can't remember the type, and in any case haven't tried it yet.)
There's the packaging for it. It does cost quite a bit more than the regular pasta ($1.99 for 8 oz., when you can get twice that of the plain kind for $0.99 -- however at this particular TJ's I couldn't find any plain long pasta except for spaghetti and angel hair), but it's quite good.
Here it is cooked, a bit past al dente as I was so busy trying to save the sauce that I left the pasta boiling a little too long.
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