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FETTUCCINE CON RICOTTA

1/2 stick of butter                                                1/2 tsp pepper

1 large clove garlic, minced                                  1/2 tsp basil

1 lb. Ricotta cheese                                              4 tbsp sour cream

2 tbsp. chopped parsley                                       1 lb. fettuccine

Melt butter in saucepan over a medium heat.   Add garlic, basil, parsley and pepper and sauté 2-3 minutes.  Combine ricotta and sour cream and add to butter mixture in a large bowl.

Cook fettuccine according to package directions.  Drain.  Toss with ricotta mixture.  Serve immediately.

Serves 4

Comment:

One of the points I have never mentioned before is that Karen doesn't usually let me taste these dishes before I pick a wine to go with them.  She just hands me the recipe and I go from there.

I have to admit I started out with the wrong idea here.  Karen said fettuccine, I thought "Italian", and immediately jumped to the conclusion that meant "dry Italian red wine", which always indicates Chianti to me.  Maybe another Italian red.  I scratched my head.  We like to use American wines in these pairings, and I didn't have any Chianti-equivalents at hand.

That made my mind work a bit, and that was probably a good thing.  There is nothing in this meal that requires a big red, and certainly nothing with lots of tannins.  Ricotta is a mild cheese.  This is really a rich, creamy entree, calling for something to point up the simple elegance.  The more I thought about it, the more I started to think about white wines.

So I took a look at the wine rack and went to work.  A couple of possibilities stuck out at me, and I did some quick searches on the Internet to see what others thought.  As always with an Internet search, one thing led to another, and after about 40 minutes I had 20 different suggestions, about half contradicting the other half.

No easy way out: I'd have to come up my own choice.

But I had seen a pattern in all that.  Choices may have varied, but they were all clustered around a certain group of wines: California Sauvignon Blanc, white Rhone/Burgundy/Bordeaux, California Chardonnays, Gewurtztraminers, a few dry Rieslings.  I tossed out the Europeans for this purpose and took a look at what was left.  Then I surveyed the wine rack again.

Karen doesn't really like big, heavily oaked California Chardonnays that much.  Or rather, she likes having one glass of such wines; then she's had her fill, and would prefer to change to something else.  This was looking like a meal for the two of us, and I did not want to open multiple bottles if I could avoid it.  Somehow the lighter, less-oaked Chardonnay we had available didn't seem to match tastes with the meal, so I decided to leave the Chardonnays in the rack.

Sauvignon Blanc is always very food-friendly in my eyes.  I thought long and hard about that, and the Chateau Souverain Alexander Valley 2001.  The finish of that wine is a bit intense, though.  I thought I wanted a wine that would slide into the meal, unobstrusively making the tastes just that much better, almost without being noticed until the meal was done and you sat back to say "Great meal.  That wine was perfect." over the coffee.  (Well, I can dream, can't I?)

I began reviewing the Gewurtztraminers and a couple of Rieslings when I happened upon my choice.  When we were last in the Finger Lakes we stopped at Amberg Wine Cellars.  We bought, among other things, a bottle of their Traminette, a semi-dry white wine made from a descendant from the Gewurtztraminer grape.  It has similar characteristics in floral aroma and a slight spicy finish.

I smiled.  Karen likes Traminette a lot, and I thought Amberg had done a good job with this one.  We could have a glass to start, and another with the meal, and a bit to finish off as we talked.  Mission accomplished. 

 Last modified: August 07, 2007