Pasta in cream cheese sauce

In just 15 minutes, you can cook one of the variants of the famous Alfredo pasta: in the original version - fettuccine with parmesan and butter. The dish is high-calorie, since in addition to noodles, cheese and butter, heavy cream is also used in this recipe. But on the other hand, such a pasta does not need either fish or meat additions. This is a complete dish, very tasty and easy to prepare.

Ingredients

• Noodles (or spaghetti) - 150 g
• Cream with a fat content of 20% - 80 ml
• Hard cheese - 60 g
• Butter - 20 g
• ground nutmeg - a pinch (to taste)
• Salt - 1.25 teaspoons
• Ground black pepper - a pinch (to taste)
• Fresh basil - 2 sprigs

Directions

1. Prepare all ingredients. For this dish, noodles (tagliatelle / fettuccine) or durum wheat spaghetti are suitable.
2. Instead of parmesan, I use hard cheese.
3. Boil 1.5 liters of drinking water in a saucepan, add 1 teaspoon of salt and lay out the noodles. Bring to a boil and cook according to the time indicated on the package, minus 1 minute. It is necessary that the pasta be slightly undercooked, i.e. "al dente".
4. In parallel, grate the cheese on a fine grater.
5. Remove the basil leaves from the stem and finely chop.
6. Melt the butter in a frying pan, add 50 ml of cream and hard cheese (leave 1 tablespoon of cheese to sprinkle the finished pasta). Cook over moderate heat, stirring, until the sauce is smooth.
7. Bring the sauce to a boil, add salt, nutmeg and black pepper.
8. After 1-2 minutes of boiling, the sauce thickens slightly. Take it off the heat, add the basil.
9. The noodles are already cooked. Drain the water in which the noodles were boiled, but leave 100 ml of liquid in case the sauce becomes thick.
10. Heat the remaining 30 ml of cream (until hot) and pour into the noodles. Stir.
11. Transfer the noodles to a serving bowl (I made 2 servings).
12. Top with 2-3 tbsp. spoons of cream cheese sauce, sprinkle with grated cheese and garnish with a sprig of fresh basil.
13. After serving, toss the pasta in a bowl so that each pasta is coated and soaked in the sauce.
14. Pasta in cream cheese sauce is ready. Delicate creamy sauce and a light, pleasant aroma of basil will give ordinary pasta an Italian-American flavor.
15. Try it for sure!