[Sca-cooks] Alfredo
Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius
adamantius.magister at verizon.net
Tue Aug 8 07:39:45 PDT 2006
On Aug 8, 2006, at 9:32 AM, grizly wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
> < < < < Erm, not to be too much of a stickler or to deny the
> changing world
> and all, but since the sauce on the fettucine special served at
> Alfredo's in Rome, a.k.a. Fettucine Alfredo, consists of a little of
> the salted, boiling water the pasta was cooked in, a special white
> unsalted butter from a farm outside of Rome, grated Parmigiano, and
> maybe some pepper, what are people putting into their Alfredo sauce,
> real or otherwise?> > > > >
>
>
> I'm feeling your stickle. I am also of the same opinion regarding
> construction of alfredo. Problem I have is that people with money
> to spend
> on pasta and sauce have a completely different conceptualization
> via the
> mass market in the US. The sauce to which I refer is more
> classically a
> cream reduction with butter, grated hard cheese and maybe some sort of
> starch stabilizer. Spike it with some white wine or other in the
> sautee pan
> before serving.
>
> I might even find a way to add some additional flavor compliments,
> like
> fresh ground pepper, or cubeb for the lemony hint.
Oh, I certainly wouldn't stickle [I _guess_ that can be a verb] over
that, especially for a bulk food service setting. I'd do it that way
myself. I just see little red flags waving when this type of thing
becomes accepted as canonical and the Official Real Thing is not only
supplanted, which would be bad enough, but lost entirely, which is,
in the end, culturally devastating. Of course, I don't think that's
what you're doing.
But between the marketing of tinned and glass-jarred glop, and the
modern American idea that The Sauce is really The Dish, and the pasta
merely some kind of barely-relevant starchy side (try telling this to
the native Japanese who, some years ago, claimed that importing rice
from Texas was messing up not only their economy, which they could
handle, but their religion, which they could not), we seem to be
allowing some kind of cultural slide that is, at best, sad, and at
worst, dangerous.
Next week: "Carbonara 'Sauce' -- Convenience Food or Trigger for
Armageddon?"
Adamantius
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