A Simple Pasta Dish- Oh so Elegant

Cacio e Pepe – Cheese & Pepper Pasta

Good News! Mangia with Micheline, The Journey Continues will be available for sale this month. Check out my Facebook Page, website www.mangiawithmicheline.com , or right here on my. It is currently live on Amazon Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.

I am blessed to have so many wonderful people in my life. It really became apparent how lucky I am as I work to bring my second book to fruition. Family and friends stepped up to help. The arduous task of hundreds of photographs to peruse, reliving the memories of people and times most dear. Sal and my nieces Lori, Teresa, Tanya, and Jade made the job easier. After the selection, the winners were then brought to Gene Hutnak, Gene Hutnak Photography, Scituate, RI to photograph, catalogue and download to a flash drive. Gene also took the photographs and designed both the front and back cover for the book. Once I had the flash drive in hand it was off to Maggie Hartford-Round’s house to input the stories, match up the photos and make it into a book. Maggie encourage me to self-publish this time around and offered to work her magic to put it all together. As I write this article, Maggie is putting the finishing touches of the book. Once it’s complete, I will have Gene & Linda and Maggie & Paul over for a celebration dinner. Perhaps I will make homemade spaghetti as a second course with a recipe that uses cheese and black pepper. It is called Cacio e Pepe.

This recipe is one of the ancient pasta dishes of Italian cuisine. The legend dates to the origin of this simple spaghetti dish to the Roman Empire. It is said that for centuries it was the perfect meal for the shepherds, dried pasta, aged pecorino, and black pepper are easy to carry ingredients and are hard to spoil. This recipe does not need any oil, cream, or butter. The starch inside the spaghetti and the grated pecorino combined in the correct way are enough to create the cacio e pepe sauce. Be aware that the pepper must be in abundance to bring the flavors together. Cacio e pepe looks and tastes elegant, but when it comes down to the ingredients and cooking technique, it’s actually very basis. The sauce should have three simple ingredients, cheese, pasta water, and plenty of fresh ground black pepper.  You can use just pecorino Romano cheese or a combination of Cacio de Roma cheese, which is a sharp cheese with black peppercorns throughout. I discovered this cheese in a Italian deli store on Federal Hill which prompted me to try the dish. This recipe serves four.

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Cacio e Pepe Spaghetti

1 pound of spaghetti

2 tablespoons virgin olive oil

3 teaspoons of freshly grated black pepper

1 cup finely grated pecorino Romano cheese, reserve 1/4 cup for serving.

3/4 cup of finely grated Cacio de Roma cheese (or 1 3/4 cups total pecorino cheese)

Bring a large pot of salted water to boil, then add spaghetti, and cook until al dente. While the pasta is cooking, heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat until hot. Add the black pepper and cook until fragrant, about 1-2 minutes. Drain the spaghetti, reserving 1 cup of the water. Add 3/4 cup of the pasta water to the skillet and bring to a boil. Using tongs, transfer spaghetti to the skillet. Add the cheese about a 1/4 cup at a time stirring until combine. Keep adding the cheese until sauce is creamy and clings to the spaghetti without clumping adding additional pasta water if necessary. Transfer to plates and sprinkle with remaining 1/4  cup of cheese and additional pepper, if desired.