Cacio e pepe - the dish that got away

HALLIE EPHRON: Two years ago I had the great good fortune to spend some time in Tuscany. I was smitten with the rolling landscape. The wine. The relaxed tempo of daily life. And of course, the food. Any restaurant you went to had a magnificent antipasti table to get your cravings going.

Truthfully, most of the time the antipasti looked better than they actually tasted… more a feast for the eyes than the tastebuds. After all, that zucchini and pate and prosciutto and melon had been arrayed on those platters since the restaurant opened earlier that night.

But never was I disappointed by the pasta. And in particular, an unassuming dish called cacio e pepe. Cacio is cheese. Pepe is pepper. And that’s what the dish is comprised of: black pepper and grated Pecorino Romano cheese. And, of course, pasta (along with some of the water the pasta was cooked in).

It is… a revelation. Completely delicious in its simplicity.

Since returning from Italy I’ve tried and tried to duplicate the dish. Never have I come close. Is it the pepper? The cheese? The water? Surely our pasta can’t match theirs, but I’ve even made my own pasta.

Cacio e pepe: I consider it my culinary great white whale.

Is there some food that you had as a child or a traveler that you’ve tried in vain to duplicate?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: This is SO interesting. It originated in Italy, too. (Didn’t it?) Pizza. NO MATTER WHAT I DO it is not cheesy oregano-y yeasty crispy chewy enough. I think...it may be that mere mortal ovens don’t get hot enough. I mean, it’s fine, and it’s a pizza-like thing. But eating it is mostly about the memory of other pizzas.

LUCY BURDETTE: Hallie, this is exactly the dish that I remember from one day some years ago in Rome. John and I had walked for miles and toured the Colosseum and we were ravenous.

We stopped at a little hole in the wall place and that is what I ordered, cacio e pepe. I order it anytime I see it on the menu, and the only time

I had something close was at Eataly in New York City. In fact a friend of John’s sent us her recipe, and I will try it and report back to you. But honestly, it may have been the day and the setting and the walk that made that dish so amazing!

JENN McKINLAY: Oooh! I’ve had cacio e pepe at an Italian restaurant in Queens - Trattoria L’incontro - sooooo good! They also had a pistachio creme Brûlée - to die for, seriously. Of two I’m more apt to attempt the Brûlée as baking is more my thing. I haven’t had a white whale of a recipe myself, but I had a friend who was determined to make the flourless chocolate cake from Ruth’s Chris. After much effort, she finally nailed it.

HALLIE: There’s a really good recipe for flourless chocolate cake in Julia Childs’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking Vol 2. We had it for one of our joint dinners with friends--way back when we did joint dinners with friends and everyone brought one spectacular dish.

RHYS BOWEN: ah, the cacio e Pepe! I remember it well. I’ve had it over here but it hadn’t been as good. I have tried and tried to make authentic Chinese and Malaysian food. John lived in Malaysia and we have cookbooks but it never tastes the same.

Once a Chinese friend cooked a beef noodle dish while I was watching. I tried it at home, same ingredients, same method and…. it tasted Italian! Go figure.

HANK:That’s hilarious, Rhys! Chiming in again... I had a Chinese friend explain step by step how she made her delicious food. (If I remember, it included a lot of cornstarch.) I did it anyway, exactly as she said. And… yuck. 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Hallie, I had no idea there was a name to that dish - in my house, we call it spaghetti a la blanco! Grated parm, olive oil, and pepper, and I usually crumble up some Italian seasonings like basil, rosemary and oregano. It's been one of my go-to pantry dishes for years.

I've never had a white whale dish, but my Grandmother Fleming did. As a young married woman in the thirties, she lived in the Italian section of Rochester. There was an older lady there that took her under her wing and taught her to make meatballs in marinara sauce just like they did in the old country. But Grandma SWORE she left something out, because her meatballs, though delicious, were never <i>quite</i> as good as her mentor's. 

 In my teens, she lived a block away from us, and at least once a month made meatballs, tweaking the recipe every time. We loved them, but she was never truly satisfied. In an ironic twist, she passed away without leaving the recipe written down, so I guess I'm not going to taste it again unless I can find an old Italian lady in Rochester to help me!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Cacio e pepe! It seems to be everywhere these days on food blogs and columns, but I’ve never tried to make it. A bistro on our town square does a wonderful version, though, and now I’m craving it.

My white whale would be whole wheat sourdough bread. I can make good bread but it’s never as good as the bakery loaves. I suspect lack of a commercial oven might have at least a bit to do with it.

HALLIE: Sour dough bread - sigh. Growing up in Calfornia, even supermarket sour dough bread was pungent and delicious. In the Northeast, anything labeled sour dough tastes pallid. Though I'd have to classify ALL types of bread as my white whales. I've never been adept at making bread and have assumed, as with Hank on pizza, that it's the oven. But maybe, as with cacio e pepe, it's the water.

So what's the recipe that frolics about gloriously in your memory but you've never been able to duplicate?