Food Friday: Recipe for Tortellini with Cream Sauce

The Trendy Treehouse

Making new friends and sharing great recipes go hand in hand!  Today I'm doing both! Participate with me and let me know you're following through New Friend Friday, Friendly Friday, or Quality Time! I'll be back to visit you!  To find out about these bloghops, or learn more about me and get suggestions of some past posts you would enjoy reading, go to my past blog post here! To learn more about my guest poster, Kate, go to Dancing About Architecture!

Friendly Friday

Quality Time

I'm very excited that Kate has agreed to do a
series of recipes here on Food Friday!

What shall we call this series? Passionate about Pasta?  Nuts about Noodles?  Making Simple Pasta Sauces Perfectly? Hmmm.  We'll have to think about that one, won't we? One thing you won't have to think twice about is whether you're going to love Kate's recipes!  Her recipe for Tortellini with Cream Sauce is "to die for"! If you missed her last week's recipe on Food Friday, click on Quick and Simple Fresh Pasta Sauce and try it out!  If you try a Food Friday recipe, send me a picture and/or what you thought about it, and I'll include it in a future post. Also, don't forget that you, too, can be featured here with a recipe or recipes!  Just email or leave a comment letting me know you're interested in guest posting, and I'll get back to you as soon as possible!  I've sure enjoyed getting to know Kate better through this experience. (Did you know Kate's lived in Italy and many other parts of the world?)  I'm so grateful for her wonderful recipes and write-ups!  And now I'll turn it over to Kate!

Hello everyone,

My name is Kate and I usually blog at Dancing About Architecture. Wendy was so kind as to suggest that I share a couple of my recipes with you in the next weeks. It is a great honor to be able to share some of my simple recipes on such a wonderful blog. I hope you enjoy the recipes. Please feel free to leave a comment if you have any suggestions or feedback on the recipes I share.

When it comes to real Italian cooking, it can be difficult to find the right ingredients depending on where you live. If you have an Italian/ European supermarket around, it shouldn’t be a problem. But if you don’t live near one, check different supermarkets in your area. I even found all the right ingredients in one tiny regular supermarket in the Caribbean once, even though I thought that would be impossible.

That’s one of the reasons why I love to go grocery shopping: You never really know what your supermarket has to offer, what options are available until you have searched for things. I could spend hours in the different aisles just looking at the shelves trying to come up with different ideas to use the ingredients I see. It is actually one of my favorite things to do when I visit a foreign country: go to a supermarket and look at what they have to offer. Some things might be familiar, others I have never seen or heard of before. Sometimes I ask people passing by what something is used for, but in general, I just come up with my own ideas or write down the name and look it up online later.

The recipe I want to share with you today has been one of my favorites as long I can remember. I am usually not a big fan of white pasta sauce, but this one I really enjoy. Whenever I am asked what my favorite simple dish is, I answer "Tortellini with Cream Sauce." It’s probably my favorite Italian dish. It is somewhat heavy and I would strongly advise against eating it too often because it is, of course, far from being healthy or a low-calorie food. Still, I love the smell and taste of this dish.

Tortellini with Cream Sauce

Ingredients: (Serves 4)

• 16 oz. Full cream (or if you can’t find this or prefer less cream, you can also use Half-and-Half, just make sure it is plain cream/Half-and-Half without any sugar or flavor added.)

• One onion

• One package sandwich meat, either ham or turkey breast (ham is more traditional, but I usually use turkey breast since I am not a big fan of pork)

• 8 oz. shredded Gouda cheese (The Gouda cheese is important for the flavor, but might be difficult to find. I have never tried it, but I guess Cheddar or Swiss could also work.)

• Fresh chives

• Salt

• Pepper

• Olive oil

• Nutmeg

• Two packages of Tortellini (I usually buy Barilla pasta, but any kind of Tortellini or filled pasta will go well with this.)

Directions:

• Cut up the onions, chives and ham/turkey breast

• Fry the onions in oil until glassy

• Add ham/turkey breast and steam a little

• Start cooking pasta

• Add the full cream/ half and half

• When the cream is warm, slowly add the cheese

• Stir until the cheese has melted

• Add salt, pepper and nutmeg according to taste

• Before serving, top with cut up chives

Enjoy your food!