Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking - Marcella Hazan [98]
5. Add the cut-up asparagus spear tips and stalks, turn up the heat to medium high, and cook for 1 to 2 minutes, turning all the asparagus pieces in the butter to coat them well.
6. Add the cream, turn the heat down to medium, and cook, stirring constantly, for about half a minute, until the cream thickens. Taste and correct for salt.
7. Turn out the entire contents of the pan over cooked and drained pasta, toss thoroughly, add the ⅔ cup grated Parmesan, toss again, and serve at once, with additional grated cheese on the side.
Sausages and Cream Sauce
For 4 servings
½ pound sweet sausage containing no fennel seed, chili pepper, or other strong seasonings
1½ tablespoons chopped onion
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
Black pepper, ground fresh from the mill
⅔ cup heavy whipping cream
Salt
1 pound pasta
Freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese at the table
Recommended pasta In Bologna, where this sauce is popular, they use it on thin, curved, tubular macaroni called “crab grass,” or gramigna. It is a perfect sauce for those shapes of pasta whose twists or cavities can trap little morsels of sausage and cream. Conchiglie and fusilli are the best examples.
1. Skin the sausage and crumble it as fine as possible.
2. Put the chopped onion, butter, and vegetable oil in a small saucepan, turn the heat on to medium, and cook until the onion becomes colored a pale gold. Add the crumbled sausage and cook for 10 minutes. Add a few grindings of pepper and all the cream, turn the heat up to medium high, and cook until the cream has thickened, stirring once or twice. Taste and correct for salt.
3. Toss the sauce with cooked drained pasta and serve at once with grated Parmesan on the side.
Prosciutto and Cream Sauce
For 4 servings
¼ pound sliced prosciutto OR country ham
3 tablespoons butter
½ cup heavy whipping cream
1 pound pasta
¼ cup freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese, plus additional cheese at the table
Recommended pasta The sauce works equally well with homemade fettuccine or tonnarelli, or with green tortellini, and with short, tubular macaroni such as penne or rigatoni.
1. Shred the prosciutto or ham into narrow strips. Put it into a saucepan with the butter, turn on the heat to medium, and cook it for about 2 minutes, turning it from time to time, until it is browned all over.
2. Add the heavy cream and cook, stirring frequently, until you have thickened and reduced it by at least one-third.
3. Toss the sauce with cooked drained pasta, add the ¼ cup grated Parmesan, toss again, and serve at once with additional grated cheese on the side.
Carbonara Sauce
AN ITALIAN food historian claims that during the last days of World War II, American soldiers in Rome who had made friends with local families would bring them eggs and bacon and ask them to turn them into a pasta sauce. The historian notwithstanding, how those classic American ingredients, bacon and eggs, came to be transformed into carbonara has not really been established, but there is no doubting the earthy flavor of the sauce: It is unmistakably Roman.
Most versions of carbonara use bacon smoked in the American style, but in Rome one can sometimes have the sauce without any bacon at all, but with salted pork jowl in its place. It is so much sweeter than bacon, whose smoky accents tend to weary the palate. Pork jowl is hard to get outside Italy, but in its place one can use pancetta, which supplies comparably rounded and mellow flavor. You can make the sauce either way, with bacon or pancetta, and you could try both methods to see which satisfies you more.
For 6 servings
½ pound pancetta, cut as a single ½-inch-thick slice, OR its equivalent in good slab bacon
4 garlic cloves
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
¼ cup dry white wine
2 large eggs (see warning about salmonella poisoning)
¼ cup freshly grated romano cheese
½ cup freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese
Black pepper, ground fresh from the