Butter and Rosemary Sauce
You can’t get much easier than butter, fresh garlic and rosemary, right? I read this recipe, and thought, hmm, it sounds like a brown butter and sage sauce (one of my favorites). So simple, yet SOOOOOOO good. This will be a snap. Then I continued reading about the recommended pasta. Why not try to make some tonnarelli too?
Marcella explains that in Italy, this kind of pasta is made with OO flour, but we can substitute regular, all-purpose flour. No problem! I have two more BAGS of OO flour, and will be bringing more home from Italy in June. (Doesn’t everyone bring an extra piece of luggage for this reason?)
Tonnarelli are fresh, square noodles (like square-sided spaghetti). It is als called “maccheroni alla chitarra”, because the Italian tool for cutting it looks like guitar strings. I quickly made my dough by hand with a little flour and 2 eggs.
My pasta cutters are attachments to my Kitchen Aid mixer, and I have two choices: spaghetti or fettucini. I used the spaghetti tool, but left the rolled dough a little thicker than I would for spaghetti, so the noodles would be as thick as they are wide. They didn’t exactly look as squared as tonnarelli should, but they were still fabulous!
Now, back to the sauce! This sauce is a shortcut to using the leftovers of a roast, and those yummy brown bits of meat and garlicy juices with rosemary flavor. In Italy, Marcella explains this is called “la pasta col tocco d’arrosto”, (with a touch of the roast). And that is EXACTLY what this version tastes like!
You get to smash the garlic cloves with the knife enough to loosen the peel (why do I always feel like a REAL chef when I do that?). The garlic, butter and rosemary is cooked for a few minutes. Then you add a crushed beef bouillon cube (the SECRET ingredient), and strain this before tossing it with the pasta and some parmesan.
You will jump up and down. You will make happy grunting noises. Your taste buds will sing an aria! This is SO GOOD!
THIS is what I will make my first week home from my Italy trip to help me with post-Italy re-entry depression!
I have cooked many, many of Marcella’s dishes, but never this one. Your description really makes it come alive! Yum and thanks!
Another wonderful-sounding pasta! I’ll have to try those noodles sometime-I love thick pasta. I don’t think my weight would like it, but my taste buds would like to make every recipe in the pasta section.
Looks and sounds yummy!
Palma, delicious looking. I showed you picture to my grandson and he said, “Cool, can you make yellow worms for us to eat, too?”
I think I shall.
You have reminded me of a dish I have always loved, but that I haven’t made in a long time. Thank you. And congratulations on the doppio zero! How lucky for me to have such collaborators.
Bravissimi. I am impressed by your bringing back doppio zero flour. I did the reverse, many many years ago, I brought American all-purpose flour to Italy because I wanted my sfoglina to try it and tell me what differences she found. But at customs when I landed in Milan, they didn’t believe it was flour. They brought dogs to sniff it. I showed my books and some press clippings in the Italian papers about the school I had opened in Bologna, and eventually I was allowed through.