It was already past seven one night this fall
when my high schooler and I finally turned away from our screens to figure out
dinner. Slumped on the kitchen stools, we were too
physically tired to sit up
and too mentally exhausted to imagine eating anything other than fettuccine
Alfredo.
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“It’s a meal
where I don’t have to think,” they said. “It’s just easy and creamy.”
As I swiped open
a delivery app, I convinced myself that we should have a weeknight treat. Then
I saw how much the price had jumped.
Raised in a home
where we could buy name-brand cereal only if it was on sale (ideally buy one,
get one free), I could not bring myself to tap “checkout”. I had the
ingredients and calculated that it would be less than $10 to make two servings,
a small fraction of what delivery would have cost. Also, fettuccine Alfredo
does not travel well; it would have congealed into a pasta brick by the time it
arrived.
So I made dinner
— not for the love of cooking or with a spark of mindful motivation, but
because it would be cheaper and taste better.
In 20 minutes —
most of that time waiting for water to boil — tender noodles can end up coated
with Alfredo sauce. Eaten hot off the stove, the creamy pasta is all comfort
yet feels light, less fleece robe and more silk pajamas. (The longer it sits
off the heat, the heavier it gets.)
Sometimes that
easy cheesiness is all you crave. The one-note flavor is the reason Alfredo is
so soothing, but some days, you want a full chord. It does not take any more
time to swirl chile crisp and wilt spinach into the sauce, but they add heat
and freshness that play well together. The greens break up the monotony of
noodles and make fettuccine Alfredo feels more like a complete one-dish dinner.
In this recipe,
chile crisp, a spicy, oniony Chinese condiment that you can buy or make,
intensifies when sizzled in butter before cream tempers its heat. Tossing in
Parmesan heightens its savory umami, and swirling it all with al dente pasta
ties together the seemingly disparate flavors into an immensely satisfying
meatless meal.
Alfredo works great with
a range of additions, and it turned out to be the ideal pasta canvas for the
firecracker crunch of chile crisp. This astoundingly simple meal — it does not
even require any chopping — tastes as complex as anything you would order from
a restaurant. And it proves that you do not necessarily need a jolt of
inspiration to make something that tastes inspired. You just have to cook.
Read more Good Food
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