Pasta with four cheeses

Introduction

Pasta with four cheeses is a tasty first course, perfect for lunch or dinner and very easy to prepare. It is a real trump card in the kitchen when you need some tasty comfort food and fast!

The sauce for this dish is a creamy, enveloping mixture, but the great thing is that you can whip it up in the time it takes to cook the pasta: this way you can serve a dish that is quick but sure to win over all your guests.

Not surprisingly, it is a recipe that has made its way around the world, becoming one of the best known recipes in America too, in the form of the famous macaroni cheese.

Today, in this recipe, we will make a lighter variant, using penne rigate topped with a simply delicious creamy cheese sauce made with Grana Padano and other ingredients. You can use different types of cheese to make it: we recommend mixing cheeses with a bit of a bite and milder ones to create a perfect, balanced mix. Now let’s look at all the ingredients.

Preparation

When the pasta is cooked, drain it directly in the pan and, if necessary, add a small ladleful of cooking water to make the cream smoother. Mix everything well and serve with a small sprinkling of Grana Padano to finish the dish.

Variants

As mentioned at the beginning, there are many variations of this delicious first course. If you love strong flavours and would like to try an even tastier pasta, why not try making pasta with four cheeses and sausage? The procedure is the same, but in addition to cream, you have to prepare the sausage separately and mix it with the cheeses once the pasta is cooked. Remove the casing and cut the sausage into small pieces, then cook it in a pan and add a dash of white wine. When ready, turn off the heat and finally add it to the pasta along with the sauce. You can count on it: the result is guaranteed.

Another ingredient you can add is walnuts, which go perfectly with cheese. In this case, all you have to do is crumble the walnuts and once the pasta is served, use them to garnish the dish: they will give it a really nice crunchy note.

Finally, another really tasty variant is gnocchi with cheesy cream sauce. Again, the procedures we have shown above are exactly the same, except that instead of penne here you should use gnocchi, smothering them in this truly delicious sauce. Again, remember to keep some cooking water aside in case the sauce needs to be thinned in the final stage for an even creamier finish.