Roscioli Roman Cacio e Pepe

Don’t be fooled by the small number of ingredients. Achieving a creamy, clump-free cacio e peoe is nearly impossible due to the extremely narrow temperature range required for success, Fortunately there is an easy trick. Whisk together a cup of water and perhaps a Tbs of cornstarch and heat until thickened. Then add your pasta water and cheese and you will get a perfect emulsion every time. Yes, I suppose it’s cheating, but my understanding is that even restaurants do this.

Measuring cheese in a cup is a fools errand. There is just too much variation in graters. Then how loosely do you pack it? Just weigh the cheese.

This dish has a tendency to seize up and become a big mess. I suggest googling Ethan Chlebowski's video for his foolproof, scientific preparation method. It's been successful for me both times I've made it.

I am in Italy now, and have been here for quite some time. Here, they use Pecorino semi - Stagianato unlike the rock-hard pecorino sold in the US (very aged). Garnish with Romano. The softer, younger pecorino doesn't require all this laboratory work to melt - and stay perfectly melted. Aged cheeses do not want to melt or emulsify.

Take the short container of Locatelli from the store and two tablespoons freshly ground pepper, dump it over the freshly drained pasta, stir with tongs and add water if necessary. Serve with the bottle of Primitivo you've already been drinking because of how easy it is to make this. And done.

Love the ingredient list/proportions like all get out....as for technique my preference is to follow Deb Perelman's method of creating a thick cheese/pepper paste with room temperature water. This can be done hours in advance. The hot pasta gets the paste dollopped over the surface. Tossing lets the cheese melt uniformly, with added amounts of the starchy pasta water added as needed, until achieving the most glorious Cacio EVER!

Grate the cheese with a microplane for the fluffiness the recipe requires and you'll find the numbers do add up.

No salt in water makes for very bland noodles.. cheese alone can't be sufficient to make it salty enough.

This may be heresy, but here's what I do: stir the pecorino and pepper together in a large glass bowl. Once the pasta has been boiling for a few minutes, take some of the water and add it to the cheese/pepper mixture, just enough to get it to a paste. Drain the pasta, pour it onto the cheese paste, stir it up with a wooden spoon, and serve. The key is a finely grated pecorino. I get a good melt, and it's delicious and super easy.

When making this dish, I mix my pecorino and black pepper in a separate bowl. I fill a large bowl, large enough for the pasta and mixing, with boiling water. Once the pasta is done cooking and drained, I empty the bowl with boiling water and add in the pasta. I then slowly add in the pecorino and black pepper mixture tossing all the while to making sure the pasta evenly coated.

A cup and a half of water is WAY WAY too much. I made Cacio e pépé soup. Not a smooth sauce.

In the original recipe, you only use Pecorino. Parmigiano is a foreign ingredient (being from Parma). It is clear though that adding it makes much more easy to prepare since Pecorino has an irresistible tendency to clump.

I made this dish using the recipe printed with the article on the Roscioli food empire and took the cooked past out of the water with tongs. What a mess: the sauce never clung to the pasta and ended up in gluey webs. To make a successful cacio e pepe pasta: drain the cooked pasta in a strainer and dry in a clean dish towel and THEN add it to the sauce.

Converting oz to cups of grated cheese depends entirely on how finely grated it is. With a fine rasp grater, one gets much more volume than with a coarse shredding.

But weight remains constant whether a solid chunk or grated. Volumes would be different.