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Cacio e Pepe

by Matt Kennard

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Pecorino, pepper and pasta water. Three ingredients, no cream, no butter if you're being strict, and the whole dish is temperature control.

Serves
4
Total
20 min
SimmeredPasta
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Pasta, pecorino, black pepper. That's the dish, and it's famous for breaking.

What breaks it is heat. Pecorino seizes into rubbery strings above about 180°F, so every instruction below is really about keeping things cooler than feels right while still making a sauce. Do that and it's four minutes. Don't and you get a pan of pasta with clumps of cheese stuck to it.

Toast the pepper. This is the step most recipes skip and it's half the dish. Whole peppercorns, coarsely cracked, in a dry pan for thirty seconds until they smell sharp and floral rather than dusty.

If it's not right

  • Clumped and stringy: too hot. Nothing recovers this; start the sauce again with the same pasta.
  • Thin and watery: too much pasta water, or not enough cheese. Keep tossing; it thickens as it cools slightly.
  • Gritty: cheese not grated finely enough.
  • Bland: the water wasn't salty enough, and pecorino can't fix that on its own.

Ingredients

4

Method

  1. **Pepper first.** Crack the peppercorns coarsely, toast them in a dry wide pan for 30 seconds until fragrant. Take the pan off the heat.

  2. **Pasta into well-salted water,** and use less water than usual so it ends up starchier. Cook to a minute short of al dente.

  3. **A ladle of pasta water into the pepper pan,** off the heat, and swirl.

  4. **Make the paste.** In a bowl, mix the grated pecorino with a few tablespoons of pasta water into a thick smooth paste. Lump-free before it goes anywhere near the pan.

  5. **Pasta into the pan** with the pepper and a little more water. Toss for 30 seconds, still off the heat or on the lowest possible flame.

  6. **Cheese paste in,** tossing constantly and adding water a splash at a time until it's glossy and coats every strand.

  7. Straight into warm bowls, with more pepper.

Goes with

From the journal

  • Italian Is the Other One — Fish is one of the foods people order rather than make. Pasta is the other, and it's the stranger case, because it's flour and eggs.

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