Modern Pasta Sauces: Delicious and Creative Twists on Your Favorite Classic Recipes

We love pasta around my house, but I tend to get into a rut and make spaghetti with tomato sauce or noodles with a cream sauce.

Modern Pasta Sauces has expanded my repertoire.

Inside Modern Pasta Sauces are sixty pasta sauce recipes built on familiar sauce bases: tomato, cream, meat, oil, pesto, and even vegan.

I am dying to try some of these, like Quick Olive Oil and Parmesan Sauce with Bacon and Fried Sage-Olive Oil Sauce with Crispy Prosciutto (oil-based sauces); Spicy Chipotle Tomato Sauce and Blender Creamy Tomato Sauce with Goat Cheese (tomato-based sauces); Creamy Roasted Carrot Sauce and Creamy Spinach-Parm Sauce (cream-based sauces); Pumpkin Seed Pesto and Sun-Dried
Tomato Pesto with Walnuts and Black Pepper (pesto-based sauces); Country Ham Ragu and Veal Sauce with Grilled Lemon (meat-based sauces); and Roasted Sweet Potato and Tomato Sauce and Eggplant, Roasted Red Pepper, and Tomato Sauce (vegan-based sauces).

I decided to try the Avocado Cream Sauce.

AVOCADO CREAM SAUCE

Ingredients:

2 or 3 ripe avocados

1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 or 3 basil leaves, chiffonade cut, for garnish

Directions:

1. Scoop the avocado fresh from the skins and place into a medium bowl. Add the lemon juice and cream and mash together with a fork until smooth. Season with salt and pepper.

2. Heat the oil in a sauce pan over medium heat. Add the garlic and saute until fragrant.

3. Add the avocado mixture and heat until just warmed through. Stir until smooth.

4. Toss with desired pasta and garnish with basil.

I mashed the avocado first.

I added fresh lemon juice. Then came whipping cream.

The garlic smelled delicious over the medium heat.

The cookbook has a clear and easy explanation of how to chiffonade. The basil was from our garden.

When the avocado mixture was warmed, we put the sauce over cheese tortellini. Amazing.

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