🍝 Cacio e pepe

Cacio e pepe is a Roman pasta dish dressed with grated Pecorino Romano PDO, freshly ground black pepper and the starchy water the pasta was cooked in, which together make a creamy sauce.

Pecorino Romano is, according to its consortium, a hard, cooked-curd cheese made from fresh whole sheep's milk, with a minimum ageing of 5 months as table cheese and 8 months as grating cheese. Visit Lazio, the regional tourism site, gives for four people 400 g of spaghetti, 150 g of pecorino and about 100 g of cooking water. The cheese is grated and mixed with an equal amount of pasta water until smooth, warming it gently below 65 °C; the spaghetti are drained a couple of minutes before the package time and finished in the pan with the cheese cream, and the dish takes about 10 minutes. The page says cream cheese is not needed.

The Rome tourism site Turismo Roma gives 400 g of spaghetti and 100 g of grated Pecorino Romano PDO for four: the cheese and freshly crushed pepper go in a bowl, the drained pasta is added with a scant ladle of hot cooking water, and everything is stirred quickly into a creamy sauce; it takes about 15 minutes. It calls spaghetti the original pasta and names rigatoni, tonnarelli and fresh egg pasta such as tagliolini or spaghetti alla chitarra as common variants, the egg pasta making the dish creamier.