It takes only four ingredients to create an international culinary incident: a classic Italian recipe, a well-known British food website, Parmesan cheese and butter. What happened? BBC Good Food published a recipe for a quick and easy lunch meal, called Cacio e Pepe, with Spaghetti, Butter, Black Pepper and Parmesan Cheese. Claudio Pica, president of the Fiepet Confesercenti Roma (an association representing restaurants in Italy) couldn’t disagree more and expressed his astonishment in several letters, including one to the UK Ambassador.

Cacio e Pepe is a traditional, Italian classic, typical for the Lazio region, made with Tonnarelli or Spaghetti, Water, Salt, Pecorino Romano and Black Pepper. No cream, no butter, no olive oil, no Parmesan cheese. And it may seem simple to prepare, but serving Cacio e Pepe requires skills, passion and experience, according to Claudio Pica.

The incident made us think of Sophia Loren adding cream to her Spaghetti Carbonara and Jamie Oliver putting chorizo on his Pizza. Don’t mess with Italian traditions!

Now that we agree on the ingredients, we need to understand how to prepare the dish. The heart of the dish is a sauce made with pasta water and pecorino. We found various ways of making this sauce, ranging from adding pepper and grated cheese to the pasta just before serving (no sauce, just sticky pasta) to a scientific one whereby the sauce is made au bain marie (complicated).

We think the main points of the recipe are:

• Use less water than usual, because you need starchy water to create the sauce
• Use less salt in the pasta water because the Pecorino cheese is rather salty
• The Pecorino must be relatively young, older cheese may make the sauce lumpy
• The Pecorino must be very finely grated

We humbly present our version of this delicious Italian classic dish.

Wine Pairing

We enjoyed a glass of Pima Luna Frascati with our Cacio e Pepe. This is a white wine from the Lazio region, or to be more precise: from the hills overlooking Rome. The wine is made by wine maker Mauro Merz with malvasia bianca di candia and trebbiano grapes. It’s a light and refreshing wine with hints of green apple and citrus. Notes of slightly bitter almond on the finish. Its freshness matched very well with the creamy Cacio e Pepe. The aroma of the wine comes with a hint of butter, which is a nice connection to the Pecorino.

What You Need

• 130 grams of Spaghetti
• 70 grams of Pecorino cheese
• 2 grams of Black Pepper
• 1 litre of Water

What You Do

1. Heat the water in a large pan and add the spaghetti
2. Warm your plates (50 °C or 120 °F)
3. Cook the spaghetti for a few minutes. Our spaghetti needed 11 minutes in total; we cooked it for 7 minutes in the pan.
4. Crush the peppercorns
5. Roast them in a pan over medium heat until they become very aromatic
6. Reduce heat and wait for the spaghetti to be somewhat cooked
7. Add some pasta water to the pan with the toasted pepper
8. Increase the heat
9. Transfer the pasta to the pan and combine
10. Add a large spoon of pasta water to the pan
11. Leave to cook
12. Repeat steps 10 and 11 until the pasta is al dente. At this moment the pan should be nearly dry
13. In parallel add some pasta water to the finely grated pecorino and make a smooth paste
14. When the pasta is al dente remove the pan from the heat
15. Allow to cool for perhaps one minute
16. Quickly add the paste and combine everything in the pan
17. Add pasta water to reach the right consistency
18. Serve immediately on warm plates
19. No need to add pepper or cheese

PS

The Good Food website mentioned they would be happy to post the original recipe. We looked for it, but couldn’t find it. We did however find a recipe for Cacio e Pepe with Gnocchi (and butter and Parmesan cheese, obviously).
Perhaps another letter to the Ambassador? Or one to the Prime Minister?