🍝 Cacio e pepe

Cacio e pepe is a Roman pasta dish of just three things: grated Pecorino Romano PDO, freshly ground black pepper and starchy pasta water, stirred into a creamy sauce. Visit Lazio makes it for 4 with 400 g of spaghetti and 150 g of pecorino in about 10 minutes, and says it needs no cream cheese. ¹²

The cheese. Pecorino Romano is a hard, cooked-curd cheese of whole fresh sheep's milk, coagulated with lamb rennet paste; it is sold after at least 5 months as table cheese and 8 months for grating, when it tastes intensely sharp. ³ It is made in Lazio, Sardinia and the province of Grosseto, from milk worked raw or heated to at most 68 °C, and curdled at 38–40 °C. ¹⁰

An ancient cheese. The consortium says sheep in Lazio and Sardinia have given the milk for this cheese for over two thousand years, and that Roman legionaries received a daily ration of 27 g of it alongside bread and spelt soup. ⁴

The Lazio recipe. Visit Lazio heats the pecorino gently with roughly the same amount of hot pasta water, below 65 °C, to keep it from going lumpy. ¹ The spaghetti are drained a couple of minutes before the packet time, tossed in a pan with the pecorino cream and a little more water until slightly thickened, and served with freshly cracked pepper. ¹

The Rome recipe. Turismo Roma puts 100 g of grated Pecorino Romano and pepper crushed in a mortar into a bowl for 4, adds 400 g of spaghetti drained al dente and a scant ladle of boiling cooking water, and stirs fast; it takes about 15 minutes. ² The Accademia Italiana della Cucina uses 350 g of thick spaghetti and 100 g of pecorino, mixed at length in a warm tureen. ⁵

Toasted pepper. Divella's spaghettoni version for 4 toasts the black pepper in a dry pan, deglazes it with two ladles of cooking water, whisks 200 g of Pecorino Romano with a ladle of water into a cream, tosses the pasta with the pepper for two minutes and stirs in the cheese cream off the heat. ⁸

Which pasta. Turismo Roma calls spaghetti the original, with rigatoni, tonnarelli and fresh egg pasta such as tagliolini or spaghetti alla chitarra as common variants, egg pasta making the dish creamier. ² Visit Lazio recommends long pasta such as spaghetti or square tonnarelli. ¹ The dish contains wheat and milk, both allergens on EU labels. ¹¹

Cacio e pepe vs carbonara, gricia and alfredo. The Accademia's gricia adds 150 g of guanciale browned with chilli to pecorino and pepper, and its carbonara adds guanciale and three eggs. ⁶⁷ Fettuccine Alfredo, created in Rome in 1908, uses butter and Parmesan instead of pecorino, according to Turismo Roma. ⁹ Cacio e pepe is the simplest of them: no meat, no egg, no butter. ¹

Why it matters to you. Use real Pecorino Romano, grate it finely and loosen it with pasta water before it meets the pasta, keeping it below 65 °C to avoid lumps. ³¹ Drain the pasta a little early and finish it in the pan; toast or crush the pepper fresh. ¹⁸² Check the label for wheat and milk. ¹¹