The art of Italian cooking: penne au gratin

Hi, this is the eleventh post about the art of Italian cooking. The ingredient about which we are talking is pasta.

In the last posts we have pointed your attention on the white sauces. Yesterday we presented four cheese pasta, today  penne au gratin.

Penne au gratin

But what is the real difference between these two recipes? Pasta is tossed with a white sauce in both cases.

Four cheese pasta sauce  is made with a great variety of cheese. Pasta is boiled, tossed with this sauce and served at once.

Penne au gratin  are tossed with béchamel sauce, Parmesan cheese and butter and baked until the surface is golden and crunchy.

If you want you can bake four cheese pasta too but it’s different from pasta au gratin whose main ingredient is béchamel sauce and not cheese.

But be careful: both the recipes are rich in calories and fat. You can’t eat them often even if we tried to use less fat than in other Italian-style  recipes.

Greetings from Italy

Carlo &  Loretta