Good morning everyone!

Welcome back to Sunday Gravy.

I feel I have a little making up to do after subjecting you to last week’s menu of “shit on a shingle.” I’m mostly joking because there were some great parts to that meal, yet still I thought you regular readers needed something special.

A “bookmark” recipe if you will.

Today’s menu is definitely that. Son of a bitch, this menu rocked the fucking balls!

We are going to make “Blackened Chicken Fettucini Alfredo” with each element done from scratch.

Well, I technically didn’t make a chicken from scratch…

but you get the general gist of it. I did make the pasta, the alfredo sauce and I also ground some of the spices that went into the blackened seasoning mix so I think I have earned a little bit of leeway here.

We’ve made our own pasta here a few times.

Here it is with some chicken Marsala.

Word!

Next we have a lovely fettucini Alfredo where the sauce had pancetta and mushrooms.

Goodness!

And here’s where I lost my damn mind and made homemade pasta, the Mother Sauce and scratch made Chicken Parmesan.

Mother FUCKER!

So when I get to the pasta making part I will give it more “pictorial” style and you can refer back to the linked recipes for further details.

Blackened proteins are a lot more prevalent now than they were in the past. The first I heard of it was about 20 years ago and it was rare to find a place that served “blackened” anything. Now? That shit’s everywhere. To “blacken” a protein you first start with a seasoning mix, then using a smoking hot skillet –  cast iron works best here – you do a hot and fast sear of the meat which will impart a dark crust to the meat. You can then finish cooking the blackened item in the oven.

You can find your blackened chicken, shrimp, catfish, Hell all fish can be blackened and you can find this preparation damn near anywhere these days.

As I was saying.

Obviously by taking a look at the photos at the start of this post we have done alfredo sauce before. There was even a comment on that post that mentioned alfredo being “bland and boring.” Interesting take but I sort of get it. Alfredo is simply cream, butter and cheese plus whatever you add to it. I happen to fucking love it for it’s creamy texture, and especially for it’s richness and of course it helps to use the real fucking cheese when you make it too.

But don’t come at me if you used Velveeta and said you’re sauce didn’t turn out right!

Don’t come at me!

Like this shit.

From it’s very rind you can see that this is authentic Parmigiano Reggiano and it is one of the best cheeses on the goddamn planet. If you use this cheese or even a slightly funkier, meltier cheese like gruyere then you will have a delicious alfredo sauce.

If you still think it’s bland and boring after that? Then maybe you need to change the protein that you are serving it with. Like today’s dish. Blackened chicken will bring the motherfucking SPICE to this and it won’t be boring anymore I gua-ran-fucking-tee that shit.

Going to start this in the order required for this meal.

Get some!

Fresh pasta from scratch.

1 1/2 cups of semolina flour

2 eggs – beaten

2 tablespoons of olive oil

2 tablespoons of water

Standard disclaimer: this recipe was made using this bad ass kitchen bastard

with the pasta roller and pasta cutter attachments. Hands down my favorite kitchen toy ever.

First measure out the semolina flour and put it in a medium size bowl. Mix together the egg, water and oil.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix. You don’t need the stand mixer to do this part, you can use your hands or a fork. Just mix until a rough dough starts to form.

Next dump that rough dough out onto a surface.

Now for the fun part. And by “fun” I mean fucking laborious as all hell part.

We’ve discussed this every time that we’ve made fresh pasta but you HAVE to knead this by hand for a full 10 goddamn minutes. Exactly! No cheating, no shortcuts or your dough simply will not have enough exercised glutens to form into a proper pasta dough. It’s been tried, tested and proven.

Set a timer and get to fucking work. Fun story! I set my kitchen timer and started kneading the piss out of this dough. It is hard work because it’s a dense dough not like a biscuit or bread dough. This fucker takes work. After kneading for what felt like fucking forever I looked at the timer and it said… Seven minutes remaining.

Jesus Christ.

Back to work.

After the ten minutes have elapsed you should have a lovely ball of pasta dough.

Wrap this up tightly in plastic wrap, we don’t want the dough to dry out, and let rest for 20-30 minutes.

When the dough has rested put the pasta roller attachment on your mixer and let’s roll this shit out.

Working in batches, flatten the dough enough that it will go through the pasta roller that is set on it’s widest setting. We will roll each piece of dough through the widest setting, then the next widest, then the next and so on. I didn’t roll this out to it’s maximum thinness, just the first 3 settings.

That single ball of dough produced a total of 6 “sheets” of pasta.

After the pasta has been rolled out, remove the roller attachment and attach the pasta cutter attachment.

Cut each sheet into lengths of pasta and hang the pasta to dry on your pasta drying rack.

You don’t technically need the drying rack but I got really tired of hanging the pasta on plastic clothes hangers from every surface in my kitchen. Get the drying rack if you plan on making homemade pasta a regular item.

When dried you will have a lovely stack of fresh pasta.

Let’s get after that blackened chicken recipe next.

Blackened seasoning mix.

2 teaspoons of paprika

1/2 teaspoon of cayenne

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon of cumin

1/2 teaspoon of dried thyme – crushed

1/2 teaspoon of onion powder

1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder

1/2 teaspoon of black pepper

1/2 teaspoon of white pepper

Here’s a fun thing: the only white pepper I could find at the store was in whole peppercorn state. So I took the white peppercorns and some black peppercorns and ground them together in my spice (coffee) grinder. So fucking much better than the pre-ground shit.

Combine all ingredients in a container like this one.

Place the lid on top and shake the living shit out of it.

Now you’ve got your seasoning blend.

To make the blackened chicken, first you will need to procure some fresh boneless skinless chicken breast.

That’s three full size chicken breasts that I cut in half.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

Next we are going to preheat “The Beast!” over a medium-high heat on the stove top.

This part is critical. Remember we have to have a near smoking hot pan to get a proper sear and create the “blackening” that we are attempting. Give this 6-7 minutes to heat up.

Dump some of that seasoning mix into a bowl and prepare to get this chicken coated.

We are going to spray just a tiny bit of non-stick cooking spray on the CHICKEN not in the cast iron prior to coating with the spices. This will help keep the chicken from sticking in the pan and will also help the spice blend stick to the chicken.

Don’t be afraid man, spice this shit up! Get a good coating on there.

When the chicken is coated in spices slap that fucker into the pan.

Don’t overcrowd the pan. I cooked about half the total chicken at a time. This won’t take long at all if the pan is properly “het up” maybe 90 seconds per side.

Give the chicken a flip.

Then we will cook the other side for another 90 seconds or so. Get a nice deep color to the chicken. Side note: this shit smells good when cooking. See that list of spices up there? You can smell each spice cooking here and it is fucking intense. Remove the chicken from the skillet and place in a lightly greased baking dish. Repeat until all of the chicken has been blackened.

Take the baking dish and place in the preheated 400 degree oven for about 12 minutes. That should do it. After you place the chicken in the oven would be a good time to start a pot of water to cook the pasta in.

Remove the chicken from the oven.

Let’s get to our final item, which can be put together in the time it takes the chicken to finish cooking.

Alfredo sauce.

1 stick of butter – just do it dammit.

1 cup of heavy cream – look I warned you.

2 cups of grated cheese – remember? The good shit.

1/8 teaspoon of NUTMEG!

2 crushed cloves of garlic – skins removed.

Some grinds of black pepper if desired.

Grate up the cheese.

Which you probably should have done while the pasta was drying and before we got into the final push but I digress.

Using a medium sized saucepan, melt the damn butter.

When melted add in the heavy cream.

Cook for a couple of minutes to combine. Next we add in the grated cheese.

Also add in the crushed garlic, nutmeg and the black pepper if you are using it. Give this a couple of more minutes until the sauce gets bubbly and starts to thicken up some.

Remove those crushed cloves of garlic from the sauce and this shit is ready for action!

Hopefully that pot of boiling water is ready at some point during the sauce making. Get that pasta in there to cook. Remember, this only needs about 3 minutes. We WANT a good chew with this pasta.

If your sauce looks like it got a little too thick or “tight” you can ladle in enough of this pasta water to get it to the consistency you like. I ended up using about half a ladle which would be what? A third of a cup or so? Sure sounds right.

To plate this goodness up, take a handful of the noodles and place the pasta directly into the alfredo sauce. I used some tongs since actually grabbing a handful of recently boiled noodles could be classified as doing some stupid shit.

Coat the noodles thoroughly. Plate the fettucini alfredo onto a, well, a plate, then take a piece of that blackened chicken that has finished cooking in the oven, cut into slices and lay that chicken right on top of the sauced pasta.

If you want, feel free to serve this with some of that all-too-sexy cheesy garlic bread pictured. Which in this case was some melted butter, garlic powder melted together and then a few shreds of fresh mozzarella cheese that we had leftover from our 2 part flatbread extravaganza and place everything on top of some sliced sourdough bread. Place under the broiler of your stove until lightly browned and melty cheesed.

Sorry but I’m just going to do this.

Mike.

Fucking.

Dropped.

Expectations more than exceeded. Holy fucking shit this works so perfectly well together. That chicken is SPICED! It’s got a low level heat from the cayenne and the freshly ground peppercorns but you get that cumin and thyme coming through too. The heat of the spice combined with the creamy smoothness of the alfredo sauce and the hearty “chew” of the fresh pasta?

I mean. Enlarge that last fucking photo. Just do it!

If you must, you can skip the fresh pasta thing and use a store bought fettucini and I would allow that as long as you make the blackened chicken and alfredo sauce from scratch. I’ll allow it but it wouldn’t be as good as this motherfucker here.

Once again I smack myself in the forehead and ask “Why in the everloving fuck haven’t you made this shit before? Asshole! You wasted all of the previous years of your life missing this fucking deliciousness! WHY!”

Sorry, I tend to be difficult on myself.

Cook this, people. For your own sake cook this. Share this! Become a goddamn legend! Pretend it’s your own recipe I don’t care.

Just make it.

Bookmark this.

Thanks to all of you for reading. I do deeply appreciate it.

PEACE!