Alfredo sauce

Having little to write about in my life, I thought I'd share my opinions about Alfredo and what it's become here in the US. The classic Alfredo, in Italy, is a sauce commonly garnished with cheese, but it doesn't necessarily have any cheese in it, and occasionally doesn't even come in contact with cheese at all through its entire existence.
American alfredo sauce, on the other hand, is a white macaroni-and-cheese sauce. That's all it really is. It's a cheese sauce, which is a good thing, but not alfredo. The american version is actually quite a bit harder to make, since you have to carefully cook cream (which can boil over quickly and catastrophically) long enough and hot enough to make a hard cheese like romano or parmesan melt into it.
The Italian version on the other hand couldn't be any simpler. First you'll need to seperate an egg. Do whatever you want with the whites, it's the yolk you'll want to have ready for this sauce. just get the yolk out and have it in a dish nearby. Take one portion of cooked noodles (as much as you'd figure on eating as a main course) and toss them with some olive oil in a skillet, saute pan, or frying pan, whatever's convenient and relatively non-stick. Once it's nice and hot, add about 1/4 cup of cream. (They sell it here as whipping cream, you certainly wouldn't want to use whipped cream, but if you find it marketed as just cream, I'm sure that'll work too. ) and once that starts to get hot, maybe starts to bubble just a bit, toss in the egg yolk and start stirring it into the cream. Once the mixture is all mixed and hot (steamy is as hot as it needs to get) you've got yourself a pan of fettucini alfredo. Take it to the table and sprinkle some parmesan on it, or maybe just some salt and pepper, I like it that way, or your favorite cheese.
You see how easy that is? oil, noodles, cream, egg yolk. It takes about 5 minutes or less once your noodles are ready. Why do we make it so complicated?

CJB