cacio e pepe — Italy

Cacio e pepe is a pasta dish built from just three ingredients: long pasta such as tonnarelli or spaghetti, coarsely cracked black pepper, and grated pecorino romano, a hard sheep's milk cheese. The name itself simply means "cheese and pepper" in the Roman dialect, and the dish belongs to the small family of Roman pasta preparations built around pecorino, alongside gricia and carbonara. The dish is reported mainly from Rome and the surrounding Lazio region, where it appears on the menus of neighborhood trattorias as a primo, the pasta course that opens a meal. It is closely tied to the pastoral economy of central Italy, where sheep farming made pecorino cheese widely available long before beef or dairy cattle products became common in local kitchens. Preparation starts with toasting cracked pepper in a dry pan to bring out its aroma, then cooking the pasta until just short of done. A portion of the starchy cooking water is reserved before draining. Off the heat, the pecorino is worked into a little of that water to form a smooth paste, which is then combined with the pasta and more pasta water until the cheese melts into a glossy, clinging sauce rather than seizing into lumps. What sets this version apart from other cheese-and-pepper pastas of the same family is its restraint: no cream, butter, egg, or cured pork is added, so the balance rests entirely on the ratio of cheese, pepper, and starchy water. Cooks vary the coarseness of the pepper and the exact water temperature, and some finish with a little extra pecorino at the table, but the dish is generally kept to its short list of ingredients.