The Italian side!

So as promised here it is my first "every Tuesday" post (for now).

This will be the third recipe i'm posting here a very easy and delish pasta sauce, one of my favorites:

"Penne ai quattro formaggi"

Pasta is something great, for all the different kinds there is plus all the various combinations of sauce and cooking techniques, there's just so much to do with!

La cucina Italiana is one of my main bases as a Chef, in part for my backgrounds, but i truly believe that all  cooks and chefs have an Italian side within. Both French and Italian cuisine are so vastly known, used and eaten world wide that most of us have some of that on us.

As for the Pasta my choice on the picture was Penne, but you can choose anything you like or even make your own pasta. Fresh pasta is very easily made and making your own can be very rewarding if the result is really good; to make your own you need:

-1 egg for every 100gr of flour and a pinch of salt

Basically u shape your flour like a volcano and in the middle put your egg(s), whisk them lightly and start mixing all of it together until u get a ball of pasta dough. If u want u can chop (very fine, no chunks) some fresh herbs like basil, parsley, rosemary and so on to add to the mix for flavor, or even other veggies or leafs, very common are, spinach (to make it look green) and tomato ( to make it look orange red ish), on the case of tomato u should use the tomato purée and perhaps add some flour until you get a dry dough!

Sauce Quattro formaggi:

-

• 5 tablespoons butter
• 4 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 4 cups milk
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
• 50 gr of blue cheese
• 80gr of Parmesan
• 50gr of Gruyère 
• 50gr cheddar

   This sauce starts with a simple Bechamel which is simply put as a neutral white sauce. 

   Start off by heating the milk almost to boil and melting the butter on a pan with medium to low heat u can even add some finely chopped onions for flavor, but cook them only till they're transparent, or melt the butter without letting it color. Once the butter is melted mix the flour in,  and when all's mixed add little by little the  hot milk stirring well until it gets smooth, it should still be a bit runny if it's not add a bit more milk and grate the nutmeg on top of it. One by one put in the Cheeses always stirring, this is a thick sauce and the cheeses tend to go to the bottom of the pan and when not stirred they'll burn down there, also you should know that the choice of cheeses above is my personal selection, i would suggest for you to stick to the blue cheese and the Parmesan cuz they're the most characteristic of this sauce, but i reckon the others u can choose your own.

The final result should be a nice slightly thick sauce full in flavor, try it and if you feel as though u need a bit more seasoning then correct with salt, if you're asking why would i say this only at the end, then the reason is, when dealing with cheeses always correct the salt at the end, after all some cheeses already have a high concentration of it!

I hope this was easy enough for ya, if u try this the go ahead and tell how did that go!

cheers, c ya next Tuesday!