So funny! The Italians are correct. Itâs not caccio e Pepe. It might be perfectly good to eat and easy to prepare, but it needs a different name.
The implication is that pecorino romano is not easily available in the UK. Fine, there should be a dry(ish) sheepâs milk cheese in the UK, right? Or, are they implying that people canât get hold of a simple cheese made with milk of a sheep? Is life that bad?
In a statement, Good Food said it has been in touch with Fiepet Confesercenti to âexplain that
our recipe is designed to be easy to use for home cooks using readily available ingredients in the UKâ.
I sympathise with the Italians who want to ensure their traditional dishes are kept original.
However I must confess I often add a little cream to dishes
I like to add cream to Bolognese sauce for a smooth finish.
"You can do all the variations in the world â but you cannot use the original Italian name for them, said Maurizio. âYou cannot say it is cacio e pepe if you put butter, oil and cream in it. Then it becomes something else.â
I agree with this. I would be well pissed off finding a recipe on internet, thinking Iâm cooking the real thing when itâs not.
I donât mind variations, I do it myself all the time but one has to declare it as such.
I just realized I never ever cook with cream. The only time I even buy any - like hardly ever - is when I want it for a dessert (my âVermicelleâ for example must absolutely be covered in whipped cream).
Indeed, the creaminess comes from the starch floating around in the water where pasta was cooked (aqua di cottura).
I find those purists quite entertaining, people play with the recipes all the time. Just because some entity has declared some particular version the original doesnât mean others are bound by it.
TBF Iâve never come across another sheep cheese like Pecorino, from whichever region it comes, so texture-wise a Grana Padano or Parmesan is probably the closest match if youâre substituting for it, although quite a different flavour.
But no, I donât think itâs going to be that difficult to find Pecorino in the UK, but itâs more the cream that the Italians seem to be objecting to.
Personally I use cream in cooking quite a lot, for steak sauces for example, but I wouldnât do it with pasta, simply because I find any pasta dish like that gets boring after about three mouthfuls, at which point I feel like Iâve had enough and would now like to move onto the secondo please. Eating a big bowl of pasta with sauce just doesnât work for me as a meal.
It may be an old adaptation of a recipe.
I didnât bother with Waitrose - they probably have three or four types of pecorino.
I use it in some recipes. Even Lidl here has grated and pecorino in a block.
Itâs not the playing with the ingredients - itâs calling it the original name describing something which it isnât.
Anyway, I think itâs great that the Italians are so into their food culture.
A few people are here thankfully (in the German part of Switzerland) but for most itâs something or other Paniert mit pommes.
Me too.
I think it is because every mouthfull tastes the same, with most dishes you several things on your plate with different flavours.
Works better for me if I make pasta as a side with chicken or veal.
Yes, and not just the taste, but the texture, which is important for some people (me).
Iâve recently (relatively, like the last ten years or so) discovered one pasta which I do really like, pappardelle, thick wide noodles, like oversized tagliatelle. Served with something like a sausage and bean casserole, or some stews and casseroles, notably one I havenât done for ages, wild boar with a bit of chocolate and chilli in the sauce, which I came across years ago in Florence.
Anyway, it retains a chew even if you try to overboil it, is in big enough pieces that you need to cut them and generally gives a contrast of both taste and texture to the main dish.
Not normally stocked in most supermarkets in France or CH, but I recently found that they had it in Ottoâs, of all places, so bought several boxes.
Thereâs also weather and seasons. In a hot Roman summer pasta al limone is fresh, perfect for lunch, pair with a chilled white wine. Try the same pasta in a Swiss or British winter and you feel empty and disappointed. I guess people uses cream because they want a heartier meal during colder days.
But, is that comfort food in February related to Roman cacio e pepe? No, not at all.
I buy it there too.
Ottoâs has a much more interesting pasta selection than the standard Swiss supermarkets.
Weird, the stuff they have there. I also picked up a couple of bottles of Hot&Spicy HP Sauce on my last visit. Canât get the standard stuff anywhere now, since our local French Intermarche stopped having a British section of shelves. Now I just need to find somewhere I can get Salad CreamâŠ