Review: Trader Giotto’s Alfredo Sauce

Alfredo sauce is so easy to make from scratch — it’s just heavy cream, butter and parmesan cheese (and in my case, lots and lots of pepper and garlic) — that one wonders why anyone would put it in a jar and sell it. We all know the answer to that question: we’re usually too lazy to make it ourselves.

Trader Joe’s version of this simple recipe has waaaay more than three ingredients (what the hell is xanthan gum?) but you sure can’t tell by tasting it. I know it’s supposed to be kind of bland, but this stuff is beyond bland. It doesn’t really taste like anything, but despite being incredibly runny it has a creamy mouth feel. I’ve had better alfredo in frozen dinners (Marie Callender’s is my favorite.)

I made this sauce my own by heating it on the stove top to make it thicker, and by adding salt, pressed garlic and freshly ground black pepper.

If you want make your own from scratch, here’s the Williams-Sonoma recipe. (Nutmeg? Where did that come from?)

Marinara Sauce

I adapted this recipe from one I found on the Williams-Sonoma website.

• 2.5 lb. tomatoes
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 5 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 Tbsp. oregano
• 2 Tbsp. basil
• Salt and pepper to taste

This is the point in the recipe where I attempted to puree the tomatoes using the infamous Martha Stewart food mill (see below). Because the spinning part is about half an inch from the bottom, it took me almost an HOUR to smash the tomatoes completely, and no matter what I did I still had chunks left over. I would have been better off using my blender.

The original recipe tells you to first sauté the garlic in the olive oil, add the remaining ingredients and cook on the stove top (add the basil at the very end). Since I didn’t feel like slaving over the stove, I threw everything in my Crock-Pot (set on High) and did something else for four hours.

The Crock-Pot method worked well for the most part, but I will make some changes for my next batch of sauce. When cooking with a Crock-Pot there is no reduction, so the sauce was really runny; next time I’ll crack the lid open a bit. Also, there was really no point in adding any olive oil; it just floated there on top. Finally, I will not add the basil until the end of cooking.

I froze most of the sauce and put the remainder in the fridge to eat later. The sauce reheated and reduced nicely on the stove top a few days later. I added some fresh sliced shiitakes from the farmers’ market (buy the ugly ones, they’re cheaper). This sauce was yummy with some pasta and fresh parmesan.

This is a great thing to make in a big batch on a lazy Sunday afternoon and freeze it for later. Cooking in a Crock-Pot allows you to ignore it while it’s cooking, without burning the place down.

Fie on you, Martha Stewart!

Martha, most of your kitchen products are of fine quality and a great value, but your food mill sucks!

I bought your food mill ($35 at Macy’s) because I needed to puree a bunch of tomatoes for marinara sauce. (More on the sauce later.)  I put the thing together, and the spinning part doesn’t reach the bottom.  How am I supposed to smash ANYTHING completely when there is half an inch of unwanted space in the way?

To get this thing to work properly, I’m going to take it to my brother’s house, put the “pinwheel” part in a vise, and bang on it with a rubber mallet until the blades are aligned where they’re supposed to be.  Then I’m going to give it to my sister-in-law because I have already purchased the far superior food mill made by OXO ($50 at Williams-Sonoma and elsewhere).