My Pink Sauce

Back a long number of years ago I got to New York City once or twice a year.  In that time I got to hang out with a crowd who were frequent visitors  …and voracious eaters.   They were the ones who lead me to America’s Restaurant in Midtown Manhattan.   While there I had my first experience with pink sauce.   I was amazed.   It was in my gustatory top ten.   I spent a number of (pre-internet) years, eight or ten attempts, trying to figure out how they did it.   I thought it was a flour based white sauce mixed with tomato.  I kept ending up with tomato gravy over noodles.   Gross.

It was was relatively not that long ago I came to the revelation the white is alfredo sauce.  Discovering that allowed me to create a particular favorite with the kids in my house.

First you need to make an alfredo sauce.

One Stick Butter
One Pint Whipping Cream
One Cup Grated Parmesan Cheese.
Four to Five Cloves of Garlic Diced.
One Half Teaspoon Salt
Freshly Ground White Pepper

In a wide sauce pan place:

One stick of butter, add to this four to five cloves of chopped garlic.   Optionally you can also add some quartered shallots. Lightly saute the garlic in the butter until it has softened.   Control the heat because you do not want the garlic to brown.   When the garlic has reached transparency push it to the outside rim.   Quickly splash into the center of the pan about half a cup of the whipping cream, then quickly add to it the cup of Parmesan cheese.  Stir quickly and try to keep the cheese from coming to a significant boil.   You want to melt the cheese but you don’t want to scorch it at all.   Once it gets really melty controlling the heat with just mixing will be difficult.   Begin to add more cream to control the temperature and cool the pan.  Eventually you will have all the cream in, lower the temperature under the pan and slowly with occasional stirring bring the pan up to a boil.

Use caution, because though you want to rise to a boil, to thicken the sauce, if you boil it too much it will curdle.   Watch it close and stir constantly when it begins boiling otherwise you will have very tasty, garlicy, cottage cheese to spread on noodles.   Tastes good but looks gross.  You don’t want that.   So keep an eye on it and never let it boil too hard.

And you can stop right here.   Put this sauce over some wide noodles and you have fettuccini alfredo.    You can add some grilled chicken or shrimp on the top if you want.   Mostly we eat it with only noodles.   We eat it every year on Christmas Day and think about the movie _The Holiday_.   Pair it with a savagnin blanc or woody chardonnay.     Heart attack on a plate.

But if you want to take this further, into a pink sauce, here is what you need to do.

Here is the tip of my knife
and the new spice on it.   I guess
maybe a strong half teaspoon?

One Jar Spicy Spaghetti Sauce
One Half Jar Pizza Sauce
Red Pepper Flakes (Or my new red pepper spice)
One Half Teaspoon Salt

After a few minutes of boil add to your alfredo one jar of spaghetti sauce.   If possible, (and people in the rest of the world are saying “why would this be hard?”) try to buy a sauce that says something about spicy in the name.  I find that even though we are going to be controlling the final spice level with red pepper flakes the spicy labelled sauces have a flavor that up-spices better than the blander sauces.   I don’t always get what I want here though.   I live in the land where there are people who think catsup is too spicy.   So getting spicy spaghetti sauce is a crapshoot at the local grocery.  I usually pick some up in the city the week before.

Add to this mix the half jar of pizza sauce.   I find this adds a bit more tomato punch in the flavor.

Sometimes I will cast iron fry up some red
peppers and onions, adding this to the
sauce just before serving.

Then, add some additional spice.   I have always used about a quarter teaspoon of red pepper flakes but I found this new flake mixture at the local Asian grocery.   It seems to be flakes, stems and floor sweepings but I have been really liking the flavor it adds to dishes.   I put in one knife tips’ worth, tried it a couple of minutes later.   I think the flavor had not really opened up yet.   It didn’t taste spicy in the least.    So I added another tip and then it turned out really quite hot.   So I guess my advice is to give it a little time before adding more.

Bring this all up to a boil for a few minutes and then mix with cooked pasta.   I tend to use either linguini, particularly when I can buy it fresh, or once in a while I use angel hair as an alternative.  I like my noodles thin though.   Fettuccine would be the common restaurant solution.

Drain the cooked pasta, put into a bowl.   When using the linguini noodle I like to have a rough mix-in of the sauce.   Some members of the family like drenched noodles, other members like them almost dry.   Laddle in the sauce but keep it heavier on one side.   When I make the angel hair they must be fairly drenched or they clump into a bond stronger than steel.   You have to work quickly to coat these noodles before they clump.   But, if you are too rough on them they shred.   Those few times though, where it all just works out perfect, and the fine angel hair pasta is hot and slippery with cream and Parmesan, those times… are what I make pink sauce for.

This is the amount of Tony's seasoning I apply
to the chicken and the majority don't complain.

I like this dish best when I serve it with ribbons of grilled chicken.   I cut the chicken breasts in half the long way to cut their thickness in half.  I coat them in oil and Tony Chachere seasoning (..and forever thank you to the first pink hair’d girl I knew who introduced me to that spice) Grill them on a hot bed of coals four minutes per side or as you see fit.  Bring them in and cut them into strips.   The kids dive on them.    But still, the house favorite of the rest of the family is shrimp.  I raise a cast iron skillet with peanut oil to just beginning to smoke.   Throw shelled raw shrimp coated in Tony’s and my new red pepper flakes into the hot skillet.   Toss’em around a bit.  They cook quick though.   Three four minutes and they are done.    Do not over cook!

Some notes:
Do not make this recipe unless you are willing to fresh grate your own Parmesan Cheese.   I do not want you making one of my recipes by using some Craft Cheese green bag of pre-grated.   And that stuff that comes in the tall round can?   In our house we call that “Sawdust”.    No.   If you are going to make this you have to own a cheese grater and the muscles to use it.

If you are making alfredo sauce, the more money you spend on your Parmesan Cheese the happier you are going to be.   More money equals better.   —I have not seen that formula plateau yet.   It doesn’t so much matter in pink sauce so I tend to pay ~$9/lb.

Try to avoid ultra pasteurized whipping cream and you can make this super unhealthy meal, slightly healthier.   Buy just the regular pasteurized and the triglycerides (I think?) are lower.