This parmesan sauce is so tasty, served over a thick pasta, my favorite being gnocchi. As you know parmesan is a very salty cheese, which is the very reason why this recipe makes about 2 cups of sauce, perfect with a pound of gnocchi. There is pretty much no prep time for this sauce, but cook time is about a half hour.
Ingredients:
- 2 cups heavy cream
- ½ cup dry white wine
- ½ cup chicken stock (I had a friend substitute vegetable stock which would be a vegetarian alternative, allow more cook time if you do this as it reduces slower than chicken stock)
- 1 cup or 4 oz. of grated or shredded Parmesan cheese
- Salt and Pepper to taste
Preparation:
In a sauce pan, heat the cream, wine and stock until it starts to bubble.
Lower the heat and simmer 20 minutes or until the liquid has reduced by about one third.
Add the parmesan and stir until the cheese is fully blended.
If it’s too thick, add in more cream.
Season to taste and serve right away.
Notes:
- Usually I cook the gnocchi as the sauce is reducing before I add in the parmesan. This works well, because then you can serve a bowl of gnocchi and immediately pour sauce over them, making them less likely to stick together. Also the longer you let the sauce sit, it gets thicker as it cools, making it harder to serve and not as appetizing.
- Steamed broccoli or chopped up pieces of ham are great additions!
- Don’t forget about this sauce as it’s reducing! Read the story below to find out why
Story:
The last time I cooked this, or I should say attempted to cook this sauce, I left it to reduce too long. I can only guess that the cream, wine, stock concoction burnt and turned sour. But being the “It’s going to be fine” type of girl, I went ahead and got the pasta cooked then added the cheese. The smell was a tad overwhelming, as bought to my attention as my boyfriend’s smoke alarms started going off. After pulling out some batteries and opening a few windows, I added the sauce to the pasta and served us up two heaping bowls. It wasn’t absolutely terrible, but it certainly wasn’t great. Being the trooper and hungry guy he is, my boyfriend ate his entire bowl. I however, could only stomach about half of it.