Tortellini Even a Toddler Would Love

As a very good friend of mine just (literally, just, as in, minutes ago) posted on Facebook, I (we!) have been in a cooking rut lately.  Pinterest is all the rage these days, and while combing through pages and pages of luscious-looking food pictures can be both a time suck and inspiring, it takes some effort to actually start putting some recipes together for a week's worth of dinner.  You gotta go to each site, get the recipe, print it out, figure out what new ingredients you might need, go shopping.... ah.  I've been doing it for the past couple weeks, and so far I've liked everything I've tried off Pinterest, but it's getting kind of expensive.

So sometimes you end up going back and resurrecting your old favorites.  The ol' reliables, the stand-bys.  That's what this recipe is for me, and since I shared it once with my aforementioned friend, who loved it, I figured it's time to share it with you.  My husband is not a fan of heavy pasta dishes (bummer -- Pinterest is saturated with them), so when he's not home, this is my go-to treat-myself pasta dish.  :)

If you, like me, have made anything off Pinterest lately, chances are you probably have these ingredients on hand.  And if not, well, it's not that many ingredients.  And I promise you it's worth the simple effort involved.

This is the first grown-up pasta dish I made for my daughter and she loved it, and still loves it.  Make no mistake -- this is a heavy dish -- and I know it's summer and we all like to eat light, but damn this is a good pasta dish.  I hope you enjoy it as much as me and my creamy-stuff-loving daughter do.  :)

Creamy Roasted Garlic Tortellini

• 2 heads garlic, roasted*
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1/4 cup sour cream
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 package cheese tortellini -- I use a 19oz package frozen cheese tortellini
• 1-2 tablespoons butter
• Minced parsley
• Salt and pepper to taste

*To roast garlic:  Cut off top to expose cloves.  Place heads in a sheet of aluminum foil with the heads up.  Drizzle olive oil on top.  Seal aluminum foil into a packet and roast for 1 hour at 350 degrees.  Let cool before removing cloves to make sauce. 

When the garlic is done, it should look like this:

Cook's note:  Spread this roasted garlic on a piece of French bread, and thank me later.

So now that your garlic has roasted itself to sweet deliciousness, pop those cloves out and drop them into a blender.  I find that the easiest way to do this is with a butter knife, like this:

A lot of people actually like to hold it in their palms like that and squeeze them out by squeezing their hand into a fist, but I find that this way gets the most garlic out.

Once you've popped all the cloves out into the blender, pour in the olive oil and 1/4 cup of the heavy cream and give it a whirl until the garlic is completely pulverized.  Then add the rest of the heavy cream, the sour cream, Parmesan, salt and pepper.  Whirl it again to combine; the sauce will be thick at this point.

Cook the tortellini according to package directions and drain.  Melt the butter in a skillet large enough to hold all the tortellini.

Then pour in that thick, rich, delicious sauce.....

And stir it up and heat it through.  Simmer for about 10 minutes, and if the sauce seems too thin for you, add some more Parmesan cheese.  Salt and pepper the pasta to taste.  Before serving, stir in the minced parsley.

Pour it onto a plate... you will probably want a big serving.... and enjoy.

If you are feeding this to a toddler, you probably want to cut the tortellini noodles in half.  But, you're probably a good mom and already know this.

Enjoy!!!