Tonight’s dinner included garlic on every item – toasted garlic bread, roasted asparagus seasoned with garlic salt, pepper and lemon juice and then fettuccine noodles in a creamy garlic sauce.

I made a cheese based pasta sauce a week ago and ended up with a gooey mess after adding cheese to the hot dairy mixture. This time around I was determined not to repeat that. I read in On Food and Cooking that the cheese should be added slowly and that the dairy into which it is mixed should be no where near boiling. Letting this sauce cool a minute or two off heat and slowly whisking in the cheese kept it from becoming a gooey mess. It was smooth all the way around!

The sauce, adapted from Get Saucy, goes like this:

• 1 head of garlic
• 1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• 1.5 tsp fresh thyme leaves
• 1 tsp chopped basil, divided
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 350. The garlic gets sliced in half horizontally and placed sliced side up in a glass pie pan or other small glass dish. Drizzle the EVO over the top and sprinkle garlic halves with the thyme and basil. Cover with foil and roast for about an hour. Garlic should be tender, gooey and golden. Let cool.

Pick out garlic centers with a tooth-pick, removing any skin and place in a small sauce pan. Mash until smooth. Stir in the cream and heat over medium-low heat until slightly reduced – 8 to 10 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool for a minute or so. Whisk in cheese a little bit at a time until combined followed by pepper, basil and salt to taste.

I prepared this a day a head of time and refrigerated it in a sealed container. When the noodles were about 5-7 minutes from being done I returned the mixture to a sauce pan and reheated until smooth. After draining the noodles I returned them to the pot, mixed in the sauce and let stand a minute or two for the sauce to be absorbed by the noodles.

Tonight’s sauce was a relatively simple pan sauce made from roast chicken drippings, chicken broth and red wine. The receipe for the chicken is Alton Brown’s B & B Chicken. Basically a whole chicken is butterflied and then broiled/roasted on both sides on a bed of vegetables (onions, celery, carrots – i.e. Mirepoix) for about 50 minutes. After the chicken is removed from the roasting pan, the pan itself is set over high heat and 1 cup red wine and 1 cup chicken broth are added and brought to a boil.

The vegetables gave up most of their goodness in the cooking process so they can be discarded once they’ve soured the pan bottom to loosen the fond. The mixture is reduced over high heat until about 1 cup of liquid remains – any drippings from the resting chicken can be returned to the pan. It’s then strained into a fat separator through a mesh strainer to remove the solids. After a rest, the “jus” can be poured off into a small dish for serving. It won’t disappoint!

The roast chicken was served with mashed potatoes and green beans. The potatoes got drenched in the pan sauce (along with the chicken) and the green beans (just 12 oz of the frozen variety) were dressed in a simple amandine sauce as follows:

• 1/4 cup slivered almonds
• 1.5 tbsp butter
• 1 tsp lemon juice (fresh is best!)