Top 3 Weeknight Pasta Videos from Giada De Laurentiis | Food Network

So I have a pound of penne cooking, and I've just peeled four garlic cloves, and I'm making my main attraction. It's this wonderfully herbed, creamy shrimp sauce over pasta that I just love. So a little garlic to the pan, a little olive oil, so we're gonna add the shrimp right into the skillet. And a lot of times we end up overcooking shrimp, but it really doesn't take long. As soon as they turn pink, they're done. It's really quick, so make sure you watch them. So just give them a quick toss, salt and pepper, nice seasoning. And I keep the pan pretty high, about medium-high heat. You know, we can add some red pepper flakes and make this nice and give it kind of a kick. Just add it to the shrimp. Just about a pinch of red pepper flakes, just for a little added flavor, make it spicy on the holiday. I need a spoon, just grab all the shrimp out. And see, as they turn pink, you pull them out, because they're gonna cook for another 30 seconds or a minute when I'm tossing the pasta at the end, and I don't want them to overcook. So just pull it all out, yummy, they're so good. And I'm gonna add the tomatoes that I drained and chopped, and some white wine, about a cup or so of white wine, nice dry white wine. Pick up all those little bits from the bottom of the pan from cooking the shrimp. Clam juice. Now, the clam juice is instead of chicken stock, like you need a little more broth to create a sauce. And basically, it brings out the flavor of the shrimp. So about a third of a cup of clam juice, and a little salt and pepper, just a little here, a quick little stir, and cream. So the cream, it's gonna be kind of like a light pink sauce, it's not gonna be heavy on the red, it's not gonna be a red sauce. We're gonna add three quarters of a cup of heavy cream, there we go. And we're gonna bring it to a boil, and then let it simmer for a few minutes so the sauce can thicken. So in the meantime, I'm gonna grab and chop my herbs, and grab some Parmesan cheese. Alright, parsley and basil are done. The sauce has reduced and gotten slightly thick, which is perfect, and it turns like this very light, pale, pale pink color. And we're gonna add the shrimp back in too. Finish this off, there we go. Toss that together, and here we go with the pasta. Let's grab all the pasta, and just kind of toss it in there. And I just grate the Parmesan cheese all over the top of the pasta, so it starts to just stick to the pasta. And then the sauce, when we toss it, the sauce sticks to the Parmesan cheese that's stuck to the pasta. It creates a nice, thick sauce. And just kind of toss it all together, mmm, oh it smells so good. Very nice. So, I'm going to salt the water for my pasta, and these fettuccine cook quicker than dried pasta so they'll take about four to five minutes. And we are going to finish cooking them in the cream sauce, and that's when they absorb all of those flavors. We're just going to put our fresh fettuccine in the water. There we are. Okay. I'm going to heat up my pan here, and we're going to heat two cups of heavy cream. And originally, fettuccine Alfredo was only made with butter and Parmesan cheese. When chefs started to make it in America, the butter and the Parmesan cheese just didn't have that same rich quality that it has in Italy, so they started to add heavy cream to get that same texture and the same richness. Now that I've got that, I'm adding some lemon juice, but I want to make sure the seeds don't get in the cream. Now, what the lemon juice does, and I'm also going to add lemon peel, and what the two of them do, it sort of cuts through the heaviness of heavy cream. It gives it a little bit of a tang, a little bit of a kick. And we're going to use about a half a cup of fresh lemon juice. And as long as you don't bring it to a boil, it won't curdle. In fact, I want to make sure that we keep this on a low heat. I'm going to add one more lemon. If you go ahead and zest your lemon before you cut it open, you won't have to buy extra lemons. So, I'm just going to zest it right now, and then hold on to it and add it at the end. There we are. That looks good. Okay. So, I've got my cream and my lemon juice. Now I need my butter, and lots of it. The butter will help thicken the sauce, and it'll also help the lemon juice from curdling the cream. I'm just going to give it a quick little stir. These are big chunks of Parmesan cheese. You don't actually want to cut it. You just want to break off the pieces. I'm going to put it in my food processor. It'll grate it all for me. Great. I'm going to leave that for a minute, and we'll check on our pasta, which should just about be ready. Let's see here. I'm going to taste it. Mmm. It still has a bite to it, still a little bit chewy, so I know it's not cooked all the way. So, I'm going to add the pasta. There's nothing like the smell of fresh pasta. I just love all those aromas. Now, the flame for the fettuccine and the cream sauce is still on low. Again, you don't want to boil it, because it could curdle. So, we're going to add a little bit more cream. Mmm. It smells so good. We're ready for the cheese. I need about two cups of Parmesan cheese, some of the lemon zest I zested earlier, fresh nutmeg. I don't like to buy pre-ground nutmeg, because I don't know how long it's been sitting on the shelf, and also, it doesn't have that wonderful taste and aroma as when I grate it myself. I need a little bit of salt and some white pepper. And white pepper is mellower, so it works really well with this rich dish. I'm ready to plate it. The pasta has absorbed the cream sauce, and the rest is for me. Mmm. It is velvety, it's rich, and I can taste the little bit of lemon. It gives it a little kick. We got a little macaroni here. We're going to cook that up, and we're going to make a delicious meal all in the pot. So, what we want to do is start cooking the pasta, and these elbow macaroni are little, so they cook pretty quickly. We've already got some ground beef and some sausage in here to really give everything a lot of flavor. I've already browned it. Now, I'm going to chop up some shallots and some garlic to really flavor this. So, in the 70s is when they first started with all the packaged food items, and it became really popular really fast, and you can imagine why, because it made people's lives a lot easier, especially the moms, right? It just kind of caught on like wildfire. It's still, I think, kind of popular today, but nothing like it was in the 70s. And I think there wasn't anyone who didn't know about it, and probably at some point didn't have it or didn't eat it. We're going to add some seasoning. We're going to still do the beef, the elbow macaroni, but we'll chop up some shallots, and we'll add some tomato sauce, lots of Parmesan cheese, and a little mascarpone. And of course, because I can't do a sort of a one-pot meal without adding something green, some spinach. We'll add the shallot right in there, season up the ground meat and the sausage, kind of adding a little bit of both, just to, again, make it a little more gourmet. Okay, toss the garlic in there, and we'll let that cook slightly. Perfect. Okay, so now we want to add a little bit of tomato puree, make it nice and tomatoey, and use the liquid from the tomato to scrape up the bottom bits on the pan, because when you're browning the meat, you get all these yummy caramelized bits of meat, so the sauce, the liquid, picks it all up. Probably add a little bit of salt, and we're also going to add a little bit of mascarpone to make it creamy. I like it creamy. A quarter cup of mascarpone. Again, they didn't use mascarpone, but I think it's going to add a lot of creaminess to this. As you can see, it turns into a nice pink sauce. We're going to add a bunch of parmesan cheese, and then I'm going to check on the pasta. So you want to do, like, about two cups of parmesan cheese. I feel like that's what brings the whole dish together, is the creaminess and the nuttiness. So the mascarpone and the parm. Toss it all in there. Let's check on our pasta. I used to feed these little baby elbow macaroni to Jade. Mmm. They cook up fast. So we're going to add those in, and add a little pasta water in, too, to loosen up the sauce a little bit. Yeah. I bet you my friends are going to feel like this was, like, kid food. Okay. A little more cheese. A little more cheese melting right on the pasta. And then we've got one more thing to add to this, and this dish is done. Give this a quick little toss. It definitely smells like comfort food. That is for sure. Okay. Now, one more ingredient. Because I can't really do any of these dishes without something green, we're going to add some spinach. Plus, it adds really great color. Kind of brings it up a notch. It brings it into the modern era. Awesome. It's fun sometimes to take food from different time periods, and kind of elevate them and recreate them a little bit, and just sort of make them a tiny bit more modern. You just want to toss it until the spinach wilts. Do you see what pretty color it adds? It gives the whole dish a vibrancy that you don't get otherwise. Ah, it smells good. Okay. Now. Here is the big moment. Let's see if it tastes good before my friends get here. Mmm. Just a little tiny addition of olive oil. Just to kind of give it even more richness. But otherwise, this is comfort food for sure.