Madison (my younger sister) is obsessed with pasta. She’d probably consider it one of the main food groups. 😅

And she especially LOVES Alfredo. I mean, can you blame her? Alfredo is creamy, cheesy and, best of all, can be a bed for any number of proteins and veggies. So, keeping Madison in mind, I wanted to build a recipe for her that was approachable and consisted just a few simple ingredients; a recipe that would result in a delicious pasta dish that was on the lighter side but would still have an intense lemon and garlic flavor. Traditional Alfredo, while rich and delicious, can sometimes be a bit heavy for my tastes - And so, I wanted to make a dish that was lighter but just as creamy, cheese, saucy, lemony, garlicky... you get it.

The "secret" to achieving that 'creamy but lighter feeling', I figured, would be cream cheese! Adding cream cheese meant I could use less butter, skip the heavy cream and have a rich enough sauce that coated the noodles and broccoli well. The lemon juice + zest provided a nice acidic balance to the combination of milk + half and half that I used. Roasting the broccoli gave it, and the dish, some nice texture with its crunchiness. The fresh parsley and basil were the icing on top of the Alfredo cake, rounding out the dish with a touch of freshness. I also used less pasta than what I typically saw in other recipes: typical pasta serving sizes always seemed a little much to me. But, what was missing in the end: the garlic flavor.

Here’s what I did:

I let about 2 oz of cream cheese come to room temp, along with 2 tbsp of unsalted butter. I boiled 6 oz of farfalle (any short noodle would work) 2 mins less than the package instructions while in the meantime cut down 2 small heads of broccoli along with thinly slicing 4 cloves of garlic. I then roasted them for 15-20 mins at 425 °F with some salt, pepper, and olive oil.

For the sauce, I basically just melted the butter with the whole milk and half and half (about 1/2 cup and 1 cup, respectfully) and let that simmer for 2-3 mins. Then I added 1 cup of Parm (freshly grated), some nutmeg, garlic powder, and a pinch of red pepper flakes. Once the sauce was done, I tossed it in with the pasta for 2 more mins, until the pasta was cooked. Finally, I added the zest + juice of 1 lemon, threw in the roasted broccoli and garlic, and topped it all off with some parsley and basil!

Overall, I’d call this a success, as it was super tasty in the end and did end up having that “creamy but lighter feeling”. It had the intense lemon flavor I was looking for, but something was missing…the garlic. I was so focused on achieving that "creamy but lighter feeling" with the cream cheese, that I completely overlooked the how I used the garlic, and that it wouldn't be quite enough to give the dish the intense garlicky flavor I was looking for. The goal with roasting the broccoli and garlic together was to incorporate that nice roasted flavor with the rest of the dish. While I think I achieved that with the broccoli, even though technically I included a lot of garlic, it wasn’t enough to to flavor the whole dish.

The 2 main oversights on my part:

1. Simply throwing slices of garlic in at the end would not be enough to flavor the dish.

2. Thinly slicing the garlic and roasting it at such a high temperature resulted in nice and browned broccoli, but way too brown garlic.

As I continue to work on this recipe, I know I need to rethink how I used the garlic. For next time, I'm thinking I'll either mince the garlic and let that fry a little right before adding the rest of the ingredients for the sauce. Alternatively, it might be really delicious to roast a whole head of garlic and blend it in with the sauce.

While I didn't walk away disappointed with how it tasted overall, I was disappointed that I didn't put enough thought into an essential element of the dish. Exactly how you prepare a component for a dish and how you use that component makes a big difference. I could have just used the lemon juice and thought that would be enough to get the intense lemony flavor I wanted. But the zest is where the real flavor is, which I think made a big difference here. The garlic in this case needed more time to meld with the rest of the flavors of the sauce, or just be more fully incorporated. I wouldn't call it a "failure" but, going forward, I'll be more careful thinking about how all of the flavors, not just one, will work together to make a complete dish.