Cacio e pepe
With a bit of chilli crisp
All cooking is trial and error. Admittedly, there should probably not be as much error as this but I’m sure Marco Pierre White once made a mistake (Actually, I doubt it. The man could smear melted butter on cardboard and it’d still be delicious).
This week’s error came once again in the classic whiplash of “Is this hot enough?” followed by the immediate and damning “Oh Jesus that’s way too hot and now the cheese is clumpy”.
The good news is I think I made a new form of semi-hard cheese. A sort of mozeralla, but with pecorino. The bad news is I wasted pecorino intended for a creamy, silky cacio e Pepe.
If I ever try to convince you to add grated cheese to pasta water on the heat again, assume I am being held hostage.
Alas, I corrected course, removed the clumps of cheese, took the pasta off the heat and added more cheese until I did have a beautiful creamy cacio e pepe.
Completely unsatisfied and rather embarrassed on account of my mistake (also still with a bizarre craving for chilli on everything) I then decided to top the dish with chilli oil.
I’d highly recommend.
Cacio e pepe with crispy chilli oil (serves two)
You’ll need:
1-2 tbs of whole black peppercorns
50g of pecorino romano
200g of spaghetti (preferably fresh!)
1 tsp of crispy chilli oil of your choice
Method:
Prep all your ingredients before you start, including making your pasta, grating your cheese and finally crushing your black peppercorns with your mortar and pestle.
Pop your pasta onto boil and on a low heat, heat your pepper, making sure to toss it around before it burns.
When your pasta is almost done, take a ladle or two of pasta water and combine with the pepper, stirring until it combines.
Crucial: at this point, take the sauce off the heat and wait a few minutes.
When your pasta is cooked (should only take a minute or two), add ladles into the pepper sauce and stir rapidly.
Only when the pasta is not piping hot is it safe to add the grated cheese, handfuls at a time, stirring the mixture rapidly.
Add ladles of pasta water as you go and continue to build the sauce with the starchy water and cheese.
When your desired consistency, plate up and top with crispy chilli oil.
It’s something about the creamy, cheesy flavour with the bite of the chilli that feels nostalgic. It probably just reminds me of mi goreng, the likes of which Marco Pierre White could only dream of.