Cacio e Pepe

Originally published on Young In Rome

Although I like to pretend to be quite the accomplished chef, I recently came to the realization that after 5 months in Italy, not only have I not mastered the classic Roman pastas, I’ve never even made some of them! For the uninitiated, the traditional cucina romana primi features four staples: amatriciana, carbornara, cacio e pepe and alla gricia. These are all variations on a theme, sharing many common ingredients. Yet somehow, each permutation from the standard ingredients (guanciale, pecorino, black pepper, egg, tomatoes, etc) is rendered so differently and uniquely to truly yield four distinct dishes.

A brief rundown: my first attempt at amatriciana was last year, shortly after returning to New York from the trip to Rome that would provide the final boost for get me to up and move here, after mulling it over for two years. And I must say, it was delicious. Carbonara first entered my kitchen repetoire after a disastrous attempt in college that needed to be immediately rectified. I don’t think anyone complained about eating this lucious combination of eggs, cheese and bacon (please! no cream or peas!!!) for days while I got it right. Gricia is essentially an amatriciana bianca (without tomatoes), and some variation of that is pretty much my standard “there’s nothing in the fridge except pancetta and pecorino, oooo gricia!” lunch and/or dinner. Which brings us to the ever elusive cacio e pepe.

Cacio e pepe is one of those simplisticly perfectly named dishes that leaves no room for error. In fact, it’s one of those dishes I find particularly intriguing because it depends so much on technique. Hand two cooks the exact same set of ingredients and instructions to make this dish, and you could very easily get two plates that are worlds apart. What’s in cacio e pepe you ask? Well, cacio (cheese) and pepe (pepper). Weird, right? Oh, important side note before we proceed. While cacio is technicially a specific type of cheese, it’s also a dialect word for cheese in general. So, while I already waxed poetic about the elegantly simple name of this dish, it is not in fact made with cacio cheese, but with pecorino romano. Which is very important. Cacio e pepe. Not made with cacio.

Anyway, although I’ve consumed my fair share of the Roman Quattro, and made quite a few of them, I’d never tried my hand at cacio e pepe. Intimidated by the simplicity? Perhaps. Just as happy eating it out of a bowl of fried parmesan at Roma Sparita? Also a possibility. But whatever it was, until last night I’d never done it. But, there I was, cranking out sheets of freshly made pasta with a vegetarian and a half in the next room (forcing us to forgo that nice hunk of guanciale in the fridge), and my co-chef suggested cacio e pepe and I was all “I MUST MAKE IT”.

And so, as the pasta water boiled we disentangled the threads of angel hair-ish pasta, and set up the rest of the ingredients – namely a large pile of grated pecorino romano (about 200g for six people), a hefty dose of fresh ground black pepper, and set some butter and olive oil in a large skillet to heat up. With the generously salted water boiling and our fats melting together in a glorious buttery oily mess, I tossed the heaping pile of pasta into the water. Fresh pasta, and particularly fresh pasta as thin as we had made, cooks quite quickly, and within two minutes I was fishing it back out with a strainer and into the oiled and buttered pan. A few minutes of vigorous stirring over the heat later (you want every last bit of pasta covered in hot butter), with the emulsification aided by about three ladles of hot pasta water, and I removed the pan from the heat. We added the cheese and pepper and I resumed my vigorous stirring until the cheesy goodness was evenly distributed around the whole glorious mess. A twirl of pasta per plate, topped with an extra dash of pepper for good measure, and, well, let’s just say there’s a reason this simple dish has stuck around for so long.

Easter Feaster

Carciofi alla Romana. Beautiful and delicious.

Has it really been two whole months since we’ve last seen each other?  Well, between a plethora of visitors and a new side project, Headline Foods has been slacking off a little.  My bad. Seriously.  I mean honestly, we’ve missed fava bean season entirely, carciofi romani disappeared from the markets weeks ago, and it’s so freaking hot here I’m drinking about 6 liters of water a day sitting inside, at a desk, with a fan overhead.  Still, it’s not like that ever stopped me from eating.  And just because it might be something I ate two months ago, there’s no reason you shouldn’t hear about it, right?  So…what we’re doing today is resurrecting Headline Foods from its two month slumber, with, appropriately, Easter.  Because Easter here rocks, and we made some pretty awesome food and I would feel terrible depriving you all of the opportunity to salivate over it.  Also, one of the dishes we made was also featured in last year’s Brooklyn Spring Religious Holiday Al Fresco Extravaganza (Seder AND Easter dinner on the deck, and just a few weeks apart!), which also was inexplicably never published.

But back to Rome. Easter in Italy is a glorious tradition.  Giant chocolate eggs abound, the next day is a mandatory work holiday, people travel to Rome from all over the world, the standard celebration is just sitting around and eating, etc.  All good things.  I originally hoped to go down to Matera, a town in Basilicata known for being both exceptionally gorgeous and the home of my roommate.  Unfortunately for yours truly, the whole family decided to travel instead, so I found myself without a destination but with a craving for some springtime treats.  Fortunately, my fellow Americans here in Rome were eager for an Easter celebration of their own.  I’ll direct you over here for a recap of our shopping travails in the market (I mean honestly, no lamb available on the afternoon before Easter? What, did people actually plan ahead or something?!?), and share a little more info about the magic that goes into making these delicacies here.  And oh, what delicacies they were.  We whet our appetites with a plate of deviled eggs, whipped together with nothing more than some expertly hard-boiled eggs and a weird failed homemade mayo that actually still tasted pretty good.

After the antipasto, it was time for our primi - and that day we were going all out: pan fried ricotta gnocchi with pancetta, fave, and pecorino.  Read that again, just in case you didn’t drool enough the first time.  The main event here is the pan fried gnocchi, which has become something of an Easter tradition (if making it twice in a row counts as tradition…and I think it does).  These fluffy, crispy, dumplings of delight are actually surprising easy to make.  The dough consists of mixing together approx. 1 lb fresh ricotta, 1 egg, ½ cup grated Grana Padano cheese, salt and pepper to taste, and about 1/3 to ½ cup flour – slowly added in until the dough is no longer sticky but definitely not dry.  We actually went through the process of rolling the dough out into ropes and cutting down into gnocchi sized pieces, but I think with this type (DEFININTELY NOT WITH TRADITIONAL, POTATO BASED!!!!), you could get away with just spooning it out directly from the mixing bowl.  But into what, you ask?  Ah, into a medium sized skillet sizzling away with some hot oil.  They’ll need a minute or two per side, just enough to get nice and crispy on the outside, but maintaining the soft, cheesy center.  Heavenly.

The great thing about these is they hold their taste and flavor for a while, so you can fry them all up, and then prepare the “sauce” and toss it all together at the end.  For this dish, we started off by cooking up a pancetta, guanciale, lardo mixed bag that my new bff at the Testaccio market provided for us.  Once a fair amount of the fat was rendered, in went the beans from about 2 kilos of shelled favas.  Which I’m not going to talk about any more because fava season is over and all I want is to sit outside shelling favas and eating it with pecorino and I CAN’T UNTIL NEXT APRIL.  Anyway, with the pork and beans cooking up nicely, I finished it off with a some nice aged pecorino and combined it all together with the fried gnocchi.  See below.

Regardless of how good you think this picture looks, it tasted 1000x better. Fact.

Our secondi that night was actually two very well-roasted chickens, but we’re going to skip that (as I’ve previously covered my extraordinary talents with poultry roasting), in favor of the contorni.  Chicken-fat roasted potatoes.  Total win, but not much to be said.  Just take the chicken drippings, toss with some taters, and roast until crispy.  The other contorno was not exactly universally praised, but I happened to like it, and I’m proud of it because it was my first, and relatively successful, attempt at a truly classic Roman dish: carciofi alla romana.  Romans love their artichokes, and they particularly love them stuffed and slowly steamed to a point of tenderness that we can only dream of from our tough, Central Valley, not that I don’t love just scraping off the ends and dipping it in sauce but there’s so much MORE to an artichoke, California ‘chokes.  To be fair, this preparation isn’t exactly the least time-consuming option out there, but oh MAN is it good.  The key here is actually all of the prep work, as the actual cooking is fairly foolproof.  Correction: the key here is actually a sharp knife which makes things a LOT easier.  Because while you can eat most of the roman artichokes, you so still need to remove the toughest outer leaves, lop of the spiny tops, and remove the choke.  All while keeping a lemon and a bowl of lemony water on hand to constantly keep the cut surfaces from oxidizing.  But for more detailed instructions, check out Elizabeth Minchilli’s well-photographed step by step break down.  Once you have your ‘chokes prepped, it’s time to stuff them with a lovely mash of mint, parsley, garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper, and, which I didn’t find out until too late, anchovies!  Once the vacant choke and all gaps between the leaves are well-stuffed, the ‘chokes all go into a covered pot with about an inch or so of water at the bottom to steam for 45 minutes to an hour, or until perfectly tender (it is important that you reach perfection here).  This, however, was our one misstep.  Choosing to repurpose abandoned lemon halves as supports in the cooking pot, the end result artichokes were imbued with a citrusness that some found less than ideal.  I didn’t mind, though, plus, they’re so pretty!

Dessert was  a strawberry pie.  It was incredible.  That is all you need to know.

Melanzane Monday: Torta Rustica

The essentials

Life here in Rome lately has been chock-full of visitors.  Since the beginning of March it seems like every week someone’s mom/sister/long lost college roommate’s ex boyfriend’s cousin’s dog has been visiting.  Which on the one hand is a perfect excuse to do things like make reservations for the “let’s all collectively nerd out together at how awesome this is” underground Colosseum tour, and on the other, provides all sorts of opportunities for group dinners.  To be fair, that’s not really vastly different from life the rest of the time ’round here.  Regardless, the most recent Melanzane Monday extravaganza was held in honor of Erin’s mom, in town from Colorado, and apparently willing to subject herself to the Headline Foods kitchen.  Well that, and she brought us chocolate chip cookies so we had to thank her somehow.

The idea behind this torta rustica sprang forth from several fonts of inspiration.  One: we were making dinner on a Monday, thus, eggplant had to be involved.  Two: another aspiring chef friend had recently been experimenting with an eggplant pie that I desperately wanted to replicate in all its homemade crust and long simmered tomato sauce deliciousness.  Three: mmmmm pie.  Sorry.  Four: yeah, actually that’s it.

However, each of these inspirations had a vicious negative to them.  One: we were making dinner on a Monday, thus, we couldn’t spend all day cooking and had to actually be at work. Two: long-simmering sauce?  see number one.  Three: yeah, no negatives to pie.

Still, with the taste of melanzane pie on our lips, and hour on the clock, and a €20 bill in my wallet, we knew we could make this work.  First: pasta sfoglie!  Basically just Italian puff pastry, but sold in the refrigerated section to allow for immediate use rather than Pepperidge Farms and their ridiculous “defrosting” period.  Next: a melanzane!  And some tomatoes!  And the amazing mozzarella from the cheese shop below my apartment!  And a Peroni!  And, well, that’s about it.

We began with the traditional salting of the melanzane, which, fair readers, you have come to know well. Once sufficiently debittered, I tossed them with some oil and shoved them into the oven to roast for a bit, along with a pan of sliced and salted tomatoes.  Italian ovens don’t really have “temperatures” on them, per se, so I just kinda cranked it up to high and let them cook and caramelize for twenty minutes or so.  This is essential because they would end up spongy (melanzane) or just tasting like weirdly warm raw tomatoes (tomatoes) without any precooking, because the crust would burn in the time it took for the veg to properly roast.

So, with our veggies sliced and roasted, and our sheet of dough laid out upon a buttered pan, we layered in the melanzane and tomatoes, and topped it with a layer of sliced fresh mozzarella.  Another sheet of dough on top, and twenty minutes or so in the still hot oven, and oh my did that yield some cheesily delicious results.

Torta rustica, I think you and I are going to be very good friends.  Although next time, i’m totally allowing myself enough time to make the galette dough that I love so dearly.  I think THAT would be the ideal.