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hugeinjapan:

Dinner Tonight: 

Parpadelle, White Truffle Butter, Cream, Parmesan, Thyme

This is the dish I refer people to when they say they can’t recreate good pasta dishes at home. It has five ingredients. It takes about 10 minutes. It comes off as elegant and sophisticated. The one tricky thing is to find truffle butter, and it’s a little spendy: a small container — enough for two people, easily — is about $10, but it’s two-thirds of your total cost, and a $15 tab for something pretty decadent is completely reasonable, right? It’s less than you’d spend on steak or pork.

The cream, butter and cheese coalesce into this unctuous sauce. It clings to the pasta, but doesn’t pool on the plate, and the thyme adds just that hit of sweetness and herbacity** to cut through the richness. It’s a remarkably balanced dish to have so few ingredients and to require so little time. 

ANYWAY, do this:

1. Cook pasta al dente, drain.
2. In same pot, gently melt truffle butter over low heat*
3. Add pasta back to the pot; add a splash (1-2T) of cream
4. Grate cheese over top
5. Stir and let mixture come up to temp
6. Plate, season, sprinkle with thyme 

*This is the only even-sort-of fussy bit: truffles don’t like a lot of heat. Be nice to them so their flavor doesn’t cut and run. 

**This is not a word. “Herbaceous” is, but it’s a terrible word. Burn it.