Spaghetti cacio e pepe

Once lauded by Bourdain as:

“The greatest thing in the history of the Earth.”

… pasta cacio pepe is both simple and complicated all at the same time.

We have covered the dish before as pici cacio e pepe, but returning to it after endless YouTube tutorials never resulted in a sauce they didn’t either split or go gritty. Years later, after many more pan-finished pasta dishes, I returned to cacio e pepe and developed a version that is foolproof – at least in my hands. I offer this here and place my head on the block of Italian culinary criticism.

The technical tricks in this are twofold:

• The sauce is based on an emulsion of butter, cheese fat and water. This can only happen in the presence of an acid (the lemon).
• Overheating or underheating the cheese results in either splitting or stringing. The method I have minimises the chances of either.

To end with another quote from the late Tony:

“If I’m in Rome for only 48 hours, I would consider it a sin against God to not eat cacio e pepe. I’d much rather do that than go to the Vatican.”

Print Recipe

Spaghetti cacio e pepe

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By Nigel Eastmond – Serves: 2

Cooking Time: 9 mins

Ingredients

• 150g dried spaghetti
• Sea salt
• 50g butter
• Half a lemon, squeezed
• Several twists of freshly ground black pepper – more than would be considered decent
• 80g pecorino, grated

Instructions

1

Boil a pan of water with an enormous pinch of sea salt, add the pasta and cook for 8 mins.

2

Meanwhile, in a large, curve-sided frying pan (or a wok), melt the butter with the lemon juice and pepper and whisk to combine. Leave it off the heat while the paster finishes.

3

Drain the pasta, but keep all the cooking water (drain it into a Pyrex jug or another pan).

4

Reheat the frying pan to foaming and add about a ladle and a half of pasta water. Whisk into an emulsion. Add all the pasta and toss it over and over in the sauce until it is well coated. The sauce needs to be not too dry, but not slopping around. Add a little water if it seems too dry. If it goes too loose, the keep tossing the pasta while some of the water evaporates off.

5

Sprinkle all the cheese evenly over the pasta and toss over and over again until the cheese is melted into the pasta. Do not go for too long, to it will go to strings.

6

Serve.