Fettuccine Alfredo

Recipe #80: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/fettuccine-alfredo-recipe2/index.html

I'm going to call my version, "Spagheccine Alfredo". As you might have guessed, I didn't have any fettuccine pasta on hand so I used spaghetti instead. I used the "smart" kind which looks like white pasta but has more fibre like whole wheat pasta. As is often the case, I didn't measure it. Instead, I cooked what was in the box and threw in a bunch when the recipe called for the pasta to be added to the sauce. I reserved the rest as cooked pasta for red sauce sometime later in the week.

I ended up using about 2.5 cloves of garlic because they were stuck together. I didn't add any salt and I ground a bunch of pepper into the sauce randomly. If it matters, my butter was salted because that's all I had, and the parsley was of the squeeze tube variety (my version of fresh). I didn't end up measuring the lemon zest, but it amounted to grating the heck out of one lemon and hoping for the best. *See note later on whether that was a good idea or not* I also did not add any of the reserved pasta water to my sauce because I found it to be the right consistancy without.

This recipe took a little longer than anticipated to complete, primarily because I managed to knock a favourite red glass off the counter and it smashed all over the floor. The clean-up took a while... Aside from that incident, the rest went fairly smoothly. Speaking of which, I found that using puree on the blender for a while was the secret to getting the cauliflower sauce to smooth out nicely. You can use a similar blade on your food processor if you don't keep forgetting to use it because it sits right in front of you on the counter...

The Meatatarian and I both noticed this recipe to be rather lemon-y in flavour. Perhaps I added too much? Or perhaps one does not need as much as is called for? Aside from that, it was pretty good. Cauliflower is a good source of fibre along with the whole wheat/"smart" pasta so I'm still full a few hours later. This recipe is a good way to sneak some vegetable(s) in for those who aren't terribly fond of them. Now I just need a recipe to use up the remaining evaporated milk...