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By Theresa Rossetti, Resident Moving on from last month's tomato sauces, there are other ways to dress pasta (or gnocchi, seafood, etc.). Let's start with the ones you're probably familiar with on menus: Carbonara, Alfredo, and Pesto. Carbonara is made with pork (bacon or pancetta usually in the US), garlic, eggs, and grated Parmesan cheese (a lot of it). Alfredo, originally made with only butter and Parmesan cheese, now usually contains butter, heavy cream, garlic, and a lot of Parmesan cheese. Pesto is traditionally made by blending olive oil with basil, pignoli (pine nuts), garlic and, you guessed it, Parmesan cheese. Hoping for a little less caloric? There's Primavera, an American dish made with fresh veggies, Italian seasonings, lemon juice, and (say it with me) Parmesan cheese. Unlike the tomato-based, these types of sauces require something to thicken the sauce, or you wind up with glue on your pasta. This is done by using wine, stock or (most commonly) reserved pasta water. After the ingredients are added to the cooked pasta, ¼ cup or more of pasta water is stirred in, until the sauce is creamy not oily. Recently more simple sauces, relying on quality ingredients instead of cream, can be found in restaurants. The easiest is Aglio e Olio made with olive oil, garlic, parsley, crushed red pepper and grated cheese. This can be fancied up with anchovies and/or capers (my favorite additions). Recently I've seen Cacio e Pepe showing up when we eat out (and at Trader Joe's). This is another simple sauce with cheese and pepper. As expected, it involves a lot of cheese, and also a lot of black pepper. But what about Linguini with Clams, you ask? It's very much a version of these sauces, but more time consuming. Olive oil, shallots, garlic, wine, red pepper flakes, salt, clams, parsley are sautéed together, then added to cooked linguini with pasta water. I LOVE this dish but am very spoiled by my mother-in-law's version, so I rarely order it when we eat out. I just beg my brother-in-law to make it for me when we visit. As you can guess, many of these are simple to make at home. Want to skip the pasta? Serve them over spiralized veggies or spaghetti squash. Need some protein? Sauté some chicken, seafood, tofu etc. then add that to the completed sauce. Disclaimer: Although my last name is Italian, my ancestry is not. Any mistakes/contradictions please blame my husband's family – especially my mother-in-law — from whom all information flowed. SOLERA DIAMOND VALLEY | FEBRUARY 2023 11 Italian Food Explained (Sort Of), Part Two

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