A few months ago my friends were raving about cacio e pepe, which just means cheese and pepper. I love black pepper, but it looked like the kind of meal I would want to eat when I didn’t feel like cooking, which meant that the multiple steps involved in cooking it and then washing the dishes afterward deterred me from actually trying it until now. I used a recipe from Bon Appétit. The only non-dumpstered ingredients are the salt and pepper.

• 

• 

• 

It’s actually pretty simple, but it did involve grating cheese. I used the BellaVitano Merlot for the bulk of the cheese and added some grated Parmesan and Romano from a can at the end.

I started out by lightly browning the butter while cooking the pasta until it was just beginning to soften, then added some of the pasta water to the butter and put the pasta and cheese in, stirring until the cheese was melted. It was at this point I realized that my cacio e pepe still didn’t have any pepe, and I couldn’t find where in the recipe to put it in. It was supposed to be fried in the butter at the beginning. Whoops. It was a mistake that no doubt had a huge impact on the result.

So, I ground in a bunch of pepper, turned off the heat and added the rest of the butter and cheese. And the result is very good. I will absolutely have to try it again with the pepper in the beginning. To my friends: you were right about the cacio e pepe.