This is how to make a white pasta sauce.
I'm going to make it as a base today but also going to add an element of pesto to make it
slightly different.
Alternatively, instead of pesto, what you could be doing is adding other ingredients
such as bacon, garlic, mushrooms, etc.
and turn it into a variety of pasta sauces.
The ingredients I need for this one are some vegetable stock, whipping cream and salt,
and pepper.
Today I'm going to add a little bit of pesto - very simple sauce to make.
The first thing to do is place your vegetable stock in your frying pan and bring it to a
boil and that's going to give your sauce the body that it requires, otherwise it's only
going to be tasting of cream.
Bring that to a boil, it will take about a minute.
I am using whipping cream as opposed to single cream or double cream because single cream,
I find, isn't really ideal for sauces, it doesn't really reduce and thicken as you reduce
it, because of its low fat content.
You could also use double cream if you wished to do so.
But it's got a much higher fat content, so whipping cream is a happy median between the
two and is very versatile, it also works very well for sauces.
I am now going to add whipping cream into my vegetable stock
with a little bit of salt and pepper.
I'm going to bring that to a boil.
Boil it for a few minutes, maybe two to three minutes just to enable the sauce to thicken
slightly.
Now, as you know, cream, especially whipping cream and double cream, will thicken as it
reduces so you have to wait for that to happen before adding the other ingredients.
The sauce has been reducing for a few minutes, you will notice that it's become quite a bit
thicker already.
The next thing to do is add my pesto, so I'm going to add the pesto now.
You could also add at this point any other ingredients that you may wish to do so.
For example, you could add some fried bacon, mushrooms and garlic.
Just going to bring that to a boil again.
Rectify the seasoning with a little salt and pepper.
Okay, it doesn't need any more salt, a little pepper and now, I'm going to my pasta.
I have some cooked pasta here which I've just drained off and I'm going to add all together
for a couple of minutes just to enable the pasta to cook itself with the sauce.
After a couple of minutes, when your pasta is nicely cooked in with the cream sauce,
then I'm going to finish it off with a little bit of chopped parsley and serve it straight
away.
And to finish it off, I'm just going to decorate it with a little bit of pesto in top, a little
drizzle, and some shavings of parmesan.
That's how to make a white pasta sauce.