Pasta Tettrazini

For dinner tonight we had some spaghetti with a tettrazini sauce, salad, and a breadstick.

I cheat on breadsticks all the time! Once I tried to make them and it just did not work out right. So instead of even trying anymore, I just buy a box of frozen ones and take them out as I need them. They only take 7-10 minutes to cook and don't need to be defrosted. I suppose you could buy the fresher ones in the bread aisle, but then you'd have to use them all or freeze them anyway!

I always try to supplement pasta with salad. I need to fill up my hungry man and salad usually works! We always have lettuce, pepper, cucumber, and mozzerella on hand. I add tomatoes to mine. I've also still been working on my Cala's dressing, hehehe. Cala's is a local pizzaria near us that has really good dressing. My in laws gave us a container from my neices confirmation party and I transferred it to a fancy little pour jar.

The tettrazini sauce is super easy to make, but I must admit it works much better if you put it on pasta with chicken and then bake in the oven. It was very thick on pasta, but still was a good alternative to just plain marinara sauce.

The tettrazini recipe comes from Betty Crocker's Cookbook: Everything You Need To Know To Cook Today. I once asked a friend for a recipe and she told me it came from Betty Crocker. She wasn't into fancy recipes or foodnetwork.com. She told me sometimes it's just easier to go back to basics. So I find and use a lot of recipes or variations in this book.

For the sauce:
1/4 cup butter or stick margarine
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 cup of chicken broth
1 cup whipping (heavy) cream (I personally only use skim milk which is what we always have on hand. This also makes for lower calorie sauces.)
2 tablesppons dry sherry or water (I use water.)
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Melt butter in 2-quart saucepan over low heat. Stir in flour, salt, and pepper. Cook, stirring constantly, until mixture is smooth and bubbly; remove from heat. Stir in broth and whipping cream (or milk as I used). Heat to boiling, stirring constantly. Boil and stir 1 minute. Now the recipe that I used is supposed to be baked pasta and the parmesan is for the top. But I put the parmesan in the sauce. Then I topped the pasta with the sauce. It was a good meal for me, but I know DH didn't like it much because he didn't take leftovers (that's always the sign!!!)!!!