alfredo hassles

One of my favorite meals is pasta primavera. Today I decided to pair that with some cajun chicken and alfredo sauce.

I usually plan meals around the veggies I buy. Last week, peppers were on sale at Meijer. I love peppers. (I plan on making pizza with roasted veggies this week as well!) I sliced a red, orange and yellow pepper and an onion. I threw those with some frozen broccoli, olive oil, garlic and seasoned salt into an 8x8 pan to bake at 380 for 45 minutes.

The cajun chicken was easy. I have a recipe for a blackening seasoning but why make any of that when I have pre-made blackening seasoning? Simply dredge the chicken in the seasoning and let it fry on each side for about 5 minutes and place the whole pan in the oven at 350 for 10 minutes. Easy. I actually cooked it a little higher this time since the veggies were in there roasting.

I used some tri-colored fusilli pasta. Very good. I got it on sale for 70 cents. My issues evolved with the alfredo sauce.

I have only made alfredo sauce once and had it turn out good. Regardless of that fact, I insist on making it. The recipe is easy enough: heavy cream, butter, garlic, pepper and parmesan cheese. Usually, my problem is that I can't get the parmasen cheese to incorporate into the liquid sauce. This time my problem was slightly different in that the cheese melted and then stuck together in a giant lump and would not melt any further. I ended up dumping it into a bowl with the pasta and mixing it up after 30 sec intervals in the microwave. It never really melted enough but it was separated enough to enjoy. Someday, I'll get it figured out!