I love pasta, spaghetti and generally Italian food duh! I find the culinary exploits of the country a homage to history and a romanticism in its undercurrent. A lot of its culinary expertise come from necessity, the grit of the poor and good God do they love offal. I grew up on offal mostly and when Stanley Tucci talks about the honeycomb offal of the cow in his new series, we call that shaki in Nigeria. I grew up eating offal kidneys, livers, gizzard, chicken legs, fish head etc. all the best parts of meat and fish that hold on to the flavours they liaise with. I’ve even eat fish eyes and chicken legs…
But I am not here to talk about shaki or other parts of the cow or chicken, I am here to talk about the most delightful pasta I have ever had and you only need three ingredients. Liquid gold they call it and it is simply sublime.
Ingredients:
- Tagliatelle
- Butter
- Parmigiano.
That’s it that’s all of it.
How to:
The best type of tagliatelle I have found is from M&S, it is impeccable so I would suggest getting yours from here. Boil for about 8 minutes, perfectly al dente or a minute less than the pack says (why do we do that?!). Now I tried this three ways and all three times was perfection.
The first way was by adding the butter to the freshly cooked tagliatelle, coat the pasta with it, it should dissolve quickly because everything is hot and then add the cheese lots of cheese to give you the liquid gold. Perfection.
The second, because I was curious to see the best way to do this, whilst the tagliatelle is cooking in a saucepan, melt the butter and the cheese; butter first and the follow in with the cheese, you don’t need to hold this for long. Soon as its nicely melted, toss in the tagliatelle, and coat it with thoroughly. Also good.
The third option was melting the butter first, tossing in the tagliatelle giving it a good coating then adding the cheese on it swirling some more until the cheese melts and gives us a sauce. This is also so very good; however, my preferred way is option one but closely followed by the third option.
Now some people will add pepper and salt but note that the water in the pasta is salted and the butter should be salted butter as well, so you really do not need to add any more salt except you are a sociopath. This is the perfect recipe for any kind of moment whether you are entertaining adults or hosting children, everything about this is perfection and is always a hit.
Done. Fin.
Serve and eat whilst hot, this is the perfect dinner recipe especially after a long day at work and you have nothing but butter and cheese in the fridge because let’s face it, everyone should have butter and cheese in the fridge.
Pair this with a beautifully subtle white wine, you want it to be gentle on the tongue with a bit of bite to it. I like this overmuch with a Vermentino which I got from Castilo di Amarosa when I was in Napa. Any good white would do.