Friday, February 10, 2012

Change In Plans

I grandly announced yesterday that I was going to fry some chicken today but Flavor of Italy published a recipe this morning that changed my mind. I love blue cheese and Gorgonzola is high on my list.  Spaghetti with Gorgonzola Sage Sauce. It's so simple it is bound to be good and with nothing but butter, sage and Gorgonzola how can it be bad?

Here's what you need, to serve one person:

Spaghetti, 100 grams
Gorgonzola cheese, 60 grams
Butter, 20 grams
Sage leaves (fresh), 5 finely chopped
Parmesan cheese, grated

While your spaghetti is cooking in boiling, salted water prepare your sauce. Put the ingredients in a saucepan and cook until hot and sizzling. Done!
Drain the pasta and reserve some of the cooking water. Toss the spaghetti in the Gorgonzola sauce. If it's not creamy enough add a tiny amount of the cooking water.
If you wish you can sprinkle the pasta with grated Parmesan cheese. I don't as the sauce is so rich and tasty it really doesn't need it.
Note that there's no salt in the recipe. Gorgonzola is naturally salty so it's quite unnecessary.
This is the menu for tonight with a salad of baby greens from the greenhouse and some fresh made ciabatta. I'm hungry already and all I need to do is stop and get some Gorgonzola and decide whether to make fresh pasta or use the dried stuff. I have the day off so fresh is definitely a possiblity.

Oh, and if you need a lesson on making fresh pasta you can get a nice pictorial from Flavor of Italy as well by going here. It is very simple, the recipe for pasta is simple: 100 grams of flour + 1 egg = 1 portion of pasta. In spite of what you might see in fresh pasta recipes there is no oil or water or salt. The only trick is learning when the dough is right and the lesson linked above does a good job. Even though I have a good Italian made manual pasta machine you don't need one if you have a rolling pin and good place to roll out the dough. Just divide the dough into batches small enough to handle easily.

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