Alfredo & Basic White Sauce

Lots of yummy "soupy" and "saucy" things can be made from starting with a basic white sauce. Nearly all sauces, puddings, cream soups, and gravies have these in common:

milk/cream/milk substitute content
oil/butter/fat content
flour/corn starch/other starch substitute thickening content
Some have eggs or egg yolks

When you make a basic white sauce you can add nice things to make different sauces: fresh or dried herbs, fresh ground pepper, garlic, toasted nuts, pesto, curry, bouillon, cheeses.... the list is endless. This is so easy, and you can make Alfredo Sauce with it!

Basic White Sauce

• 4 Tab. butter
• 4 Tab. flour
• 1/2 tsp. salt (leave out if using bouillon)
• 2 c. milk or half and half (half heavy cream-half milk)

In a large saucepan melt butter. Stir in flour and salt. Add milk all at once and whisk continuously over medium heat until thickened. See, wasn't that easy? I told you so.

For Alfredo Sauce just add 1/2 cup of Parmesan and/or Romano cheese. You can saute a little pressed garlic in the butter before adding the flour to really make it more yummy.

The delicious Romano sauce that we had in Europe was basically the above Alfredo Romano Sauce, with just a touch of red sauce in it, poured over tortellini. I think it had some thin, tiny, pieces of ham or Canadian bacon on top.