fettuccine alfredo with shrimp

monday was such a stay-at-home-and-eat-comfort-food day, after the wicked party that tim had for his 25th.

so, today i cooked fettuccine alfredo – which came out fantastic. i wish i made more!

cook the fettuccine as usual: specifically, tagliatelle from this company. highly recommended. al dente, of course.

the sauce: fry up garlic in butter (i used oil and had to throw that batch out), just a tad bit of frying in lots of butter. its lots of everything, very unscientific. add shrimp (precooked, sorry superkev! thats the only kind we had at home). after a little bit, pour in milk (wish we had cream, so used lots of milk instead – like 1/2-3/4 of a cup on this pour alone), and stir. start shredding in parmesean (from a block), stirring constantly. then throw in preshredded parmesean, which added a little taste but a lot of pleasant cheesy texture. all of this is happening on medium heat. continue shredding in parmesean and stirring, and the sauce will thicken. i kept adding butter, milk and parmesaun as needed. final quantities were probably like:

3-5 tablespoons butter
1 – 1 1/1 glasses 2% milk
half a cup to a cup of preshredded parmesean
3 tablespoons of freshly grated parmesean

sauce thickened, pasta finished cooking, pour pasta water out as much as could, put the rest in (along with some of the left over water – like half a cup maybe – it added more of sauce to the sauce, if that makes any sense). stir, add more milk/butter/cheese. at some point above i salted something, but the cheese is salty on its own so it wasn’t lots. probably a good idea to salt the pasta water before it starts boiling.

so, yeah, mix in the pan, put on plates (it forms beautiful little white saucy heaps of pasta with shrimp in it – very pretty), and shred some more parmesean on top of that for good taste. i added a little dill (like not more than 2 dashes), but tim didn’t like it on his. i thought it was great.

this was definitely a success.

second part of the evening – fried potatoes, special style.
start cooking potatoes, whole. about 5-6 per 2 people should be enough, i had 7 and one was left over.
15 minutes for the potatoes (not fully done).
start frying up some onions and lots of vegetable oil. when potatoes are @13-15 minute mark, take them out and cut into cubes (use your own preference to size i think). then fry them in oil, for about 20 minutes, until they’re golden.
turned out delicious – greasy, fried, warm and soft inside and crunchy outside, and great as a tv-relaxation snack. not healthy, but helps with the hangovers for some of us (not me, of course, i didn’t have a hangover ;p)

morning after party i made some shell pasta with zucchini sauce. i’ll be trying that with more experimentation on wednesday – maybe i’ll do a variation on this recipe – my mom should have all of those things.