Goat Milk Alfredo with Sautéed Eggplant

Alfredo purists will tell you this isn’t a real alfredo — it starts as a béchamel — and they’re right, but nobody at our table has ever stopped eating to argue about it. We’ve been experimenting with a cream sauce built on goat milk, and last night we folded in sautéed eggplant. It came out good enough that it’s going up here before we forget what we did.

Goat milk makes the sauce a little tangier than cow’s milk would — closer to what you’d get if you snuck some soft cheese in there. We use our own. If what’s in your fridge is cow’s milk, it works exactly the same way.

What you need

• 1 stick of butter
• 1 cup flour
• 1 clove German hardneck garlic, minced
• Salt and pepper
• A little basil
• 2 cups whole goat milk
• 1 medium eggplant, cut into cubes
• Olive oil and salt for the pan
• Thin spaghetti — fettuccine and rigatoni work too

How we make it

Get the pasta water going and start the eggplant first: cube it, get a pan hot with olive oil and a good pinch of salt, and sauté until the cubes are browned at the edges and tender through. Set them aside.

For the sauce, melt the stick of butter in a saucepan and add the minced garlic — one clove of the hardneck does more work than two of the grocery-store stuff. Once it’s fragrant, whisk in the cup of flour and let the roux cook for a minute so it loses the raw-flour taste. Then add the two cups of goat milk a splash at a time, whisking as you go, and season with salt, pepper, and a little basil. Let it thicken — it will, and then some.

When the sauce is where you want it, fold in the eggplant and pour the whole thing over the pasta.

This sauce is thick. That’s the point. Thin spaghetti is how we had it last night, but fettuccine and rigatoni both hold up — anything that can carry a heavy sauce works well here.

And if eggplant isn’t usually your thing, this is a gentle way in. Sautéed and folded through the sauce it goes soft and mild — it’s there, but it’s not overpowering.