Cacio e Pepe

Cacio e Pepe

Cacio e Pepe
Serves 4-6

INGREDIENTS

1 lb long pasta – spaghetti or bucatini
8 oz Pecorino Toscano – divided, save some for topping
Cracked black pepper

Boil water in a large pot. Add a small handful of salt. Your pasta water should taste like the sea!
Add the pasta when it comes to a ferocious rolling boil.

Grate the cheese finely. If it’s too coarse it won’t melt nicely into the pasta and you’ll be left with a lot of clumps.

After the pasta has cooked to al dente, grab a cup – I use my Pyrex measuring cup with a handle – and scoop out a cupful of pasta water.

Drain the pasta, but don’t rinse! You want all the magical starchiness to cling to the pasta.

Put the pasta back in the pot, but off the heat. Sprinkle in about half of the cheese, use tongs to turn the pasta and mix in the cheese. Add more cheese and stir – leave about a ¼ cup for the end.

Add a little bit of pasta water at a time, stirring it until it takes on a creamy looking sauce.

Now it’s time to add the pepper. It’s pretty important that you have cracked pepper here, and if you don’t already have a hand grinder, you might want to add that to your kitchen arsenal, especially one you can set to ‘coarse’, which is what I recommend here. Bring on the pepe! But if you don’t have a pepper grinder you can use a knife to chop up whole peppercorns. Grind a generous amount of pepper into the pasta.

• To serve, use the tongs to place little bird’s nests of pasta onto the plate. Dust with more cheese and another grind of pepper.