Italian · Main
Cacio e Pepe
- Intermediate
- 20 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with savory depth stacked from the pantry’s bass notes, richness that coats and comforts, melting away silken.
Ingredients
- 400g spaghetti or tonnarelli
- 120g Pecorino Romano, finely grated
- 2 tsp black peppercorns
- Salt
Equipment
Grater / zester
The skills inside
Dry-pan toasting: spices, seeds and nutsSalted water & the float test
The words inside
Cheese FamiliesPecorino RomanoBlack Pepper & the Pepper Family
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Toast coarsely cracked pepper in a dry pan 1 min until fragrant. 1 min
- Boil pasta in lightly salted water; the cheese is salty. Reserve 1 cup starchy water.
- Off heat, whisk pecorino with a splash of warm (not boiling) pasta water into a thick paste.
- Toss pasta with pepper and paste, adding pasta water until glossy and creamy.
How it should come out
- Even gloss along every strand; no chalky white grit on the pasta, no cheese welded to the tongs or fused to the bottom of the bowl.
- Lift a forkful and the sauce hangs on it; the sauce is still loose and glossy when the bowl reaches the table, and the emptied bowl keeps a thin clinging film rather than a watery pool that separates within a minute.
- Pepper is cracked coarse enough that individual fragments are visible in the sauce, and it is worked through the coating rather than dusted over the top. No dry black powder left on the surface.
- Bitten, a strand resists at the centre with no chalky raw core.
- Fully seasoned from the pecorino alone: nothing is reached for at the table, and it is not so salty it sends you to the water glass.
Where it goes wrong The cheese met heat, the paste was built with boiling water or tossed in a pan still on the flame, and the pecorino has seized into stringy pellets sitting in a thin grey puddle.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Alpine white (dry Riesling, Grüner)
- Also Right
- Champagne: bubbles scrub richness
- From the Taps
- Bière de garde
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling apple
Melted cheese coats; acid and carbonation scrub: high-cut whites and Champagne keep the fondue from winning.
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