Gorgonzola Pasta

Gorgonzola. If you love it like me, keep on reading. If you don’t… well… try something else.

This heavenly pasta found its way to my kitchen via Mark Bittman at the NY Times (recommended blog reading).  Although this pasta contains tomatoes, its not tomato-based. Its cream-based, built upon a foundation of the Gorgonzola and half-n-half.

Ingredients

Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 cup half-and-half, cream or milk
1 cup crumbled Gorgonzola or other good blue cheese
1 pound farfalle or other pasta
2 cups arugula trimmed of very thick stems, washed, dried and chopped
1 cup cherry or grape tomatoes, cut in half
Freshly grated Parmesan to taste, optional

Method

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and salt it. In a small saucepan gently warm the half-and-half and Gorgonzola just until cheese melts a bit and mixture becomes thick; chunky is O.K.

2. When water boils, cook pasta until it is just tender but not mushy. Drain and return to pot over low heat.

3. Stir in Gorgonzola sauce along with arugula, tomatoes and a healthy dose of black pepper. Stir to combine, taste and add salt, if necessary, then serve immediately, with grated Parmesan if you like.

If you’ve been following my cooking journey you know I opt for the fat free half-n-half. Rocky made a face when I mentioned it, but it works for me. I was very thankful that HT had the Gorgonzola on sale because its not cheap.  In this case, it was a two-for-one sale. I omitted the Parmesan (and believe me, you don’t need it).

Everything went as planned, except for warming the half-n-half and Gorgonzola. I had the knob set to low because the recipe states that the mixture should be gently warmed. Figuring that the mixture would be ready at the time the pasta was cooked, I fired up the pasta pot.

Big mistake. The pasta was coming along, but the cheese/cream mixture was just sitting there. As the pasta got closer and closer to being ready, I gradually turned up the knob on the mixture.  The mixture did warm, but it never did reach the “chunky” stage.  With pasta done, I said the hell with it and plated it.

Its not as thick as expected, but that’s its only fault. The taste more than made up for it. I would certainly understand if you choose to lick the plate.

p.s. the other takeaway here… other than the superb taste… is to hold off on cooking the pasta until the cheese/cream mixture is well into the warm-n-chunky stage. Duh.

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~ by Genevieve on 2010.02.06.