Cacio e pepe is a simple dish in appearance. It has taken years of tweaking, paying attention and appreciating our own taste to make it something truly crush-worthy. Cacio e pepe is our go to pasta sauce when showing off the tremendous qualities of freshly extruded noodles. I am a huge fan of the teflon insert in a bronze chitarra die because it keeps the square edges sharp, and mimics the structure of a ramen noodle. It allows me to travel two different paths with the same die, classic Italian and neo-Japanese. I start our sauce by slowly toasting black pepper in a blend of olive oil and butter. I then build the sauce around the noodles, adding them to the pan with a generous amount of pasta water and freshly grated Pecorino Romano to create a creamy, fluid emulsion of fat, starch and cheese. The result is a slurp-able nest of spicy, decadent noodles.
Years Past
February 23, 2007
February 23, 2006
February 23, 2005
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