Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Tortellini in Cream Sauce

This is one of my absolute favorite pasta dishes, the creamy sauce, the salty prosciutto, the fresh green of the peas, and it is easy enough to make during the week after work.  It is from Food Network Magazine (speaking of which, I need to renew my subscription, possible christmas present?) and I pretty much follow the recipe, except I never use meat filled tortellini and I make more sauce than they do because I love it so much.  I just add more cream and more pasta water, eyeballing it, and I usually end up tossing in some more tomato paste so that it still has that nice tomato flavor.  The recipe can be found here, and you should probably make it as soon as possible, it is that good.  You should probably eat it from a bowl with a spoon so that you can scoop up every last drop.  

Start out by crisping up the prosciutto, you want it nice and crisp and I always find it takes longer than they say it should.  Then you add the garlic and tomato paste. 

After you have the lovely salty, tomatoey base you add the pasta water and then the cream and simmer it until your tortellini is done (you should put the tortellini water on to boil when you start cooking the prosciutto).  This is the point where I start dumping in more cream and tomato paste and pasta water until it looks like enough sauce, tasting as I go.

When the tortellini is almost done boiling, toss in the peas.  I never mess with the amount of peas.  One cup is perfect, no more, no less.  Drain the pasta and peas and dump straight into the sauce. 

Stir it all together so that every tortellini is bathed in luscious sauce.  You can also stir in some grated parmesan cheese to make it even more luscious now. 

Serve, topping with more grated cheese.

No comments:

Post a Comment