♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - So, here's a question.

What's the simplest, best recipe in the entire universe?

I would say it's cacio e pepe-- cheese, pepper, and pasta; nothing could be easier.

It turns out, over 40 years I've been trying to figure out how to make this recipe at home so the sauce is creamy, it holds nicely after a couple of minutes.

You know, very often it turns, as the French might say, snotty.

So I went to Rome, went to a whole bunch of places tasting cacio e pepe, and I had a few questions.

One is, is the pecorino cheese the same here as it is there?

Well, if you go to the Trionfale Market in Rome, they have all sorts of different varieties.

So the next question I had was, what about the pasta?

Are they using fresh pasta, dry pasta?

Dry pasta, what type are they using?

And finally, what about the pepper?

Is this just cracked black pepper on top, or did they roast the peppercorns and make it that way?

So let's go into our kitchen here at Milk Street, and let's try to sort out and uncover the secrets of a great homemade cacio e pepe.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - MOWI salmon comes ready to cook, ready to grill, ready to season, or pre-seasoned and ready to eat.

In an assortment of flavors for an assortment of people.

♪ ♪ MOWI Salmon.

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The heart of your home is the kitchen.

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♪ ♪ (indistinct chatter) - The biggest culinary mystery I've ever encountered in my whole career is, oddly enough, cacio e pepe.

So when I arrived in Rome, I started my search with a cacio e pepe crash course from my local guide, Arianna Pasquini.

- So, about the four main Roman primi.

They are cacio e pepe, which is the base.

And it's the most difficult to do, because it's just two ingredients.

Then, cacio e pepe plus guanciale, which is the cheek of the pork.

There is gricia, my favorite.

Then cacio e pepe plus guanciale plus tomato is Amatriciana.

If you substitute the tomato with the egg, you have the carbonara.

So they are based all on cacio e pepe as a base, plus some more ingredients.

But the simple one, the cacio e pepe, is the most difficult to do because it's not about the ingredients, it's about the technique.

Because I have to specify that any one has its own technique.

Some are secret.

But the only thing we all agree about is that the ingredients are two: pecorino cheese that comes from pecora, the sheep, and black pepper.

That's it.

But there is some people mixing parmigiano reggiano and using not just pecorino cheese, that can happen.

- (speaking Italian): - Now, I went to one restaurant, and they told me-- I almost fell off my chair-- they actually add butter.

- No, no, guys.

No, no, no, no.

No, no, no, no.

So, you add pecorino and some water from the pasta, and you stir with your hand, and then pecorino, until it is so creamy.

(speaking Italian) ♪ ♪ - But like Arianna said, each chef I visited had a very different take on the recipe.

- (speaking Italian): - Chef Flavio De Maio told me that the secret to his cacio e pepe is a restaurant-grade immersion blender.

- The good news is I was eating plate after plate of cacio e pepe.

The bad news is that I still felt dubious about making this recipe work back in an American kitchen.

Most of the methods I saw seemed better suited for a regular working kitchen, so I wanted to get Arianna's take as a home cook.

- For me, cacio e pepe is with spaghetti-- not fresh, the dry pasta.

Because originally we have dry pasta in Rome, we don't use a lot of fresh one.

Nowadays, the restaurants tend to use more the fresh, just because it's quicker, no?

To, to cook it.

The glue of the cacio e pepe is the starch from the water of the boiling pasta.

If you use a pasta that is very processed, that the wheat in it is very... synthetic, it doesn't release a lot of starch.

- That was the breakthrough.

The secret fourth ingredient of cacio e pepe is, in fact, the starchy pasta cooking water.

And I suspected that the kind of spaghetti we used would also make a big difference.

So, back at Milk Street we had to figure out, does pasta brand really matter?

♪ ♪ - We traveled around Italy and tasted many, many, many plates of cacio e pepe.

And we kept hearing about bronze-cut pasta, or bronze-die pasta.

Bronze-cut pasta is made using a bronze die.

The dough is forced through these little holes and cut.

So when the spaghetti comes out the other side, it has lots of ribbing and a rough sort of texture on the surface.

That is a bronze-cut pasta.

It's a little bit rough.

And if you go even to a higher end Italian artisanal pasta, it's even rougher.

What does this mean?

Well, a bronze-cut pasta is going to release more starch into the water and absorb more liquid because of the rough surface.

The supermarket brand is very slick and smooth.

It is going to absorb water, but it's going to also expel much less starch.

So I want to see what happens when I cook these three different types of spaghetti-- the supermarket brand, the bronze die, and the artisanal bronze die.

So I've got three quarts of water boiling.

I'm going to mark them all, so I know which is which.

And I'm going to cook them down and take a look at the cooking water.

So I cooked these three pastas to a good al dente stage.

Here's our basic supermarket brand spaghetti.

Here's our bronze die.

And here is a high-end Italian bronze-die pasta.

So I can already tell, you can see how much more starch has been released into the water from the bronze-cut pasta.

Even more so in the artisanal pasta.

It's a really high-end pasta, and they are meant to cook and use a lot of that water as a base of the sauce.

This is what will give it a nice viscosity, a nice richness.

And that's what we're really looking for, because cacio e pepe is really only three ingredients.

The water plays a very important role.

♪ ♪ - You know, I've been doing this for over 40 years, and this recipe, cacio e pepe, was the most difficult recipe I've ever tried to track down.

And it's insane because it only has three ingredients.

Now, one of the first things to think about is the pepper.

A lot of people just grind some pepper on pasta.

Well, it turns out the pepper is one of three ingredients, so you want to get it right, which means you want to toast a tablespoon of black pepper.

It's done when you really start to smell the peppercorns, which we're almost there.

Now you have one of the three key ingredients-- big flavor.

So we'll let that sit for just a minute.

And I like using a mortar and pestle, by the way.

You can use a grinder, but I like the texture better.

So the key thing here, after the peppercorns, is the pasta.

So it's 12 ounces of pasta and four-and-a-half cups of water.

(sizzling) And we're gonna cook that on medium high.

And we're also gonna add cheese.

This is a cup of parmesan and a cup of pecorino.

And we found by starting with a little bit of that cheese in the water, you got a kind of a creamier sauce at the end of the day.

So now I'm gonna... One of the things I find when using mortar and pestle is it's not just this motion.

If you have an up and down motion, that is also helpful.

And we use half a teaspoon of pepper at this point.

Now...

This is all about starch, okay?

So you want to have the maximum amount of starch in the water, and that's going to create an emulsification with the cheese and the pasta.

It turns out that the more expensive pastas, that are bronze-die pastas, give you much starchier water, which is really important.

So that's the first thing.

The second thing is, you know, one of the things I thought before I went to Rome was, you know, the reason we're having trouble with this recipe is we don't have the great pecorino.

Now, if you go to a market in Rome, you could spend half an hour talking to the woman, which I did, about pecorino, because there's like 12 different kinds.

So I figured, like, well, what they have there is different than what we have here.

Guess what?

It didn't matter.

In fact-- this is insane-- you can go to the supermarket and buy pre-grated parmesan and pre-grated pecorino.

It's got to be the good stuff, not in the green canister.

But if it was done at the store, it works great, because it's finely grated.

So the only thing that did matter, really, was, that you had finely grated cheese.

This is one of those recipes where the brand of the pasta will affect how much water is taken up.

So we may have to add a little more water as we go.

And there's also a couple lessons from this.

You know, when you cook pasta at home, even if you're cooking a whole pound, I'd say give it in two quarts of water, not four quarts, because you'll have more starch.

You want to slightly undercook the pasta, toss the sauce with the pasta for a couple minutes, and then add some cooking liquid to help emulsify the sauce.

That's just a classic Italian technique.

What we're looking for at this point is to have about a cup of water in the skillet.

But we're also looking for the texture.

And I can just tell it's not done yet.

It should not be al dente, it should be almost al dente, because we're going to cook this for a few more minutes.

We're going to add some cheese, toss, add some more cheese, toss, add some more cheese and toss.

Another lesson here, which is really important, is tossing.

The tossing, I think, helps to emulsify the sauce and helps it coat the pasta properly.

And the only way to test the pasta is to eat the pasta.

Okay, that's it.

I would say we have about a cup of liquid there, okay.

So, we're gonna add... About half of the cheese right now.

So the pasta is absorbing liquid.

You're starting to get a real sauce being built.

So add half of the remaining cheese.

Keep working at it.

You're gonna end up with just about a quarter cup of sauce at the bottom of this by the time you're done.

This is a pasta where you don't have-- it's not drowning in cheese sauce, okay?

It's lightly coated.

Now, look at that.

That's really starting to look great.

Rest of the cheese goes in.

The other thing that's really important here is that this sauce stays nice, right?

It stays nice and creamy.

Now, that's about the right amount of sauce, right.

It's lightly coated.

As the Italians say, it's about the pasta, it's not just about the sauce.

Okay, take that off the heat, and I'm gonna add about a teaspoon of pepper.

You can add more yourself.

When we added the whole tablespoon, it was very peppery, which a lot of people like, but you can leave that up to your guests.

Okay, we're gonna let it sit, so it sets up a little bit, and then we'll be ready to serve.

If I say so myself... (chuckling): I mean, this is really good.

I've made this dish so many times over many, many years, and it never comes out right.

And by the way, if I let it sit for two minutes using the old method, it would be really nasty right now.

But it's still creamy.

Again, it's about the pasta.

You have just enough sauce.

I'm gonna use a little more pepper.

Mm.

That is deliriously delicious.

(chuckling): This is absolutely really good.

I mean... forget the butter and cheese thing, okay?

I mean, that's good.

But this is so good.

I'm never speechless, but I am close to speechless now.

This is just so delicious.

So, cacio e pepe was a big mystery for us, and it turns out it all comes down to starch.

Don't use too much water, do it in a skillet, and use the right kind of pasta, and then toss a lot, add the cheese in additions so it melts properly.

You get a nice, creamy sauce.

Not too much-- and it'll stay creamy.

So you're sitting at the table having a glass of wine.

You don't have to rush through dinner.

So, cacio e pepe that actually works.

It's actually creamy, and it is delicious.

♪ ♪ - Zucchini carbonara.

I know that sounds a little bit like misguided vegetarianism, but it was actually born out of cucina povera, which is a cuisine that used whatever you had available.

And when meat wasn't an option, they used things that were abundant and inexpensive, and in this case, it's zucchini.

This is like a really near and dear to my heart kind of dish, because my father's Italian, and he had a beautiful garden, and we had six children in our family.

So my mother would often take vegetables like this, cook them down, get them really meaty and rich, and make pots of pasta or frittata or something like that with it to feed our family.

And it was always delicious, we loved it.

So first, I'm going to start with our carbonara.

For that, we need some eggs, and we have two kinds of cheese here.

We have pecorino, and we have parmesan.

And we're going to add some pepper to that as well.

And some lemon zest.

So these are all things that are going to give it a lot of flavor.

Guanciale does have a lot of that porkiness to it, and so we're going to add some other things to kind of up the flavor in this.

So I'm just going to whisk that together and we're going to put it aside.

So one of the things, when I was developing this recipe, it was really important to make sure the zucchini is at least a quarter inch thick so that it's a little bit toothsome.

You want to use a nonstick pan for this, because if you use a regular pan, the zucchini tends to stick.

I'm using a couple of cloves of garlic here, and I'm going to brown those to flavor the oil, and then I'm going to take them out.

Now I'm going to add half of our zucchini.

This is a lot of zucchini, but this is a big part of this dish, so we want to make sure we have enough.

It's always tempting to flip things around and turn them and move them, but really, just let it sit for three or four minutes, because we really want that nice brown sear on the bottom.

I'm going to flip these over, they're starting to brown.

Look at that.

Beautiful.

I'm going to flip them over and brown the other side, And then I'm going to do the rest of the zucchini.

(sizzling) So, I'm going to add our rigatoni to four quarts of boiling water with a tablespoon of salt.

I'm going to cook it till it's just shy of al dente.

Because if we take it all the way to al dente, when we put the sauce in with it to cook it a little bit longer, it might overcook.

So this looks like it's done.

I'm going to add the first zucchini back.

I'm going to season it with a little crushed red pepper flake.

And I'm just going to set that aside while I drain my pasta.

So our pasta is drained, our zucchini is done.

I'm going to add the zucchini into the pasta.

And I'm gonna add a half a cup of our pasta water.

Always keep some of that pasta water whenever you make pasta, because it's a great ingredient to kind of help give you a nice, silky sauce.

But also, sometimes, if it's a little dry, you have something to add, and it's already got that nice starch and saltiness to it.

So I'm gonna put this on medium high and just stir it around for about a minute.

I just want to heat everything through.

Once it's heated through-- this is important-- we want to take this off the heat, because we're going to add our eggs.

And if we do it on the heat, they could curdle, and they're not going to give you that nice, silky sauce that you're looking for.

So, we're going to add our eggs and our cheese... And stir this around until we have a nice... creamy sauce.

So, the residual heat from the pasta and the zucchini will cook that egg, so you don't have to worry about that.

But it's also going to give you a really nice, creamy sauce that's gonna cling to the rigatoni.

So I'm gonna plate a little bit of this up to try it.

And you can serve it with a little bit of parmesan.

So if you've got that summer garden that has an abundance of zucchini, this is a beautiful way to showcase it.

The zucchini still has a nice bite to it.

You can taste a little bit of the lemon.

The sauce is nice and creamy, and it really coats the rigatoni and the zucchini.

It's just delicious, simple, easy ingredients.

Enjoy.

♪ ♪ - So, so far in this episode, you've learned a carbonara, and you learned cacio e pepe.

Both are creamy without cream, but plenty of dairy.

Now we're gonna learn a creamy pasta that we fell in love with on the Amalfi coast that has no dairy in it whatsoever.

It does have an intense amount of parsley and a lot of delicious olive oil.

So to get started, we're going to blanch our parsley.

We want to cut off the bottom inch or so, the toughest part of the stems, because we're going to put it in the blender, and these really tough stems can get stuck in the blades.

When you blanch it, you also want to season the parsley.

So before we do that, we want to make sure that we have a tablespoon of salt in our water.

So when you blanch the parsley, not only do you keep it that vibrant, beautiful green that is signature of this dish, you also break down the cell walls a little bit so it's easier to purée later.

So into our seasoned water, we throw in all of our parsley, and we are just going to let it sort of be kissed by the boiling water.

We don't want to cook it, 'cause we still want that punchy, bright, herby flavor, but we do want to wilt it.

And this is probably plenty.

I'm just gonna go in with my sieve.

What's nice about doing it this way is you can put it straight in here.

And then make sure you get this really submerged.

This is plenty cool.

So you drain the water, and then you don't have to worry too much about squeezing all of the liquid out of the parsley.

You do want to get most of it, but a little bit of the liquid is fine.

All right, so our parsley goes into our blender-- with the real reason this is creamy, which is three quarters of a cup of olive oil.

We're also going to add in one garlic clove.

And now the secret ingredient.

We're going to add in colatura di alici.

I said that more or less correct.

I apologize for anyone who speaks Italian out there.

What this is is Italian fish sauce.

If you can't find this, what you can sub in is one anchovy.

Make sure you get an oil-packed one, so you're not adding too much salt.

Otherwise, you're going to put in two and a half teaspoons of the fish sauce.

That may seem like a lot, but this won't taste fishy at all.

It just rounds everything out and gives you a little more depth of flavor.

You can taste more than the bright, herbal-y flavor of parsley.

You get more flavor from the parsley with the fish sauce, and that's what we're looking for.

(whirring) So, two minutes can seem like a very long time when you're blending, but go the whole distance, because then you get the right texture.

And now we're just gonna drop in our spaghetti.

If you want to use another shape, you absolutely can.

Something with some twists and turns is nice, maybe fusilli.

We will finish cooking it in the pesto, so make sure you don't fully cook your pasta.

Here is our al dente pasta, drained; I put it back in the pot.

And we're gonna add a half a cup of that reserved cooking water.

I saved a little extra, which I always do, just in case you need more.

You never know.

If you forget your pasta water, the world will not end, everyone.

You can just put a little bit of cornstarch in some water and put it in the microwave until it's thick.

It just takes a minute or two, and then you have a starchy water to help thicken a pasta sauce.

We're gonna add in our pesto.

Look how gorgeous and green that is.

It's... it just makes me happy, it's so vibrantly green.

Your tongs are your best friend here.

And you want to sort of vigorously stir this.

Being that this is a dish from the Amalfi coast, I think it's illegal not to have lemons involved.

So we're gonna mix that lemon zest and juice in here again.

All right, we're ready to serve it.

Now, Chef Cioffi does the beautiful plate in the ladle and the twirly fork, and I'm gonna try and do that, but we'll see what happens.

But you put your ladle in, you twirl... until you get a beautiful pile.

And Chef Cioffi would laugh a little, send me back to the line, do a little more practice.

But we're home cooks, and it's good enough for a home cook.

A little extra lemon zest.

Wonderful.

And then always...

Some shine, right?

A little glisten, a little olive oil glitter makes up for a little lack of twirl perfection.

Let's give this a taste.

♪ ♪ That's pretty perfect.

It's bright and vibrant from all that parsley and the lemon, but it's got rounded corners from that sneaky fish sauce we put in there.

So here's our spaghetti with parsley pesto.

Another simple pasta dish to make that's creamy with no cream.

You can get recipe for this and all the recipes from this season of Milk Street Television at MilkStreetTV.com.

- Recipes and episodes from this season of Milk Street are available at MilkStreetTV.com, along with shopping lists, printer-ready recipes, and step-by-step videos.

Access our content anytime to change the way you cook.

- The new Milk Street Cookbook is now available and includes every recipe from our TV show.

From cacio e pepe and skillet spanakopita, to Brazilian-style carrot cake and Thai coconut soup, the Milk Street Cookbook offers bolder, fresher, simpler recipes.

Order your copy of the Milk Street Cookbook for $27, 40% less than the cover price.

Call 855-MILK-177 or order online.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - MOWI salmon comes ready to cook, ready to grill, ready to season, or pre-seasoned and ready to eat.

In an assortment of flavors for an assortment of people.

MOWI Salmon.

- We pass down traditions here.

We create and connect.

We enjoy special moments.

Some simple, some grand.

The heart of your home is the kitchen.

The heart of your kitchen is The Galley.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪