Latest news with #CacioEPepe
Telegraph
3 days ago
- General
- Telegraph
‘The English always ruin our recipes': The pasta dish that made Italy irate
Pasta, pepper, pecorino. And… butter? Cacio e pepe, the creamy pasta dish, is traditionally composed of just three ingredients. But not according to Good Food, formerly owned by the BBC, which recently published a recipe for the traditional Roman favourite that snuck in a fourth. The website, which says the pasta dish makes for an 'easy, speedy lunch', calls for spaghetti (or, controversially, the thicker pasta bucatini), ground black pepper, pecorino and butter. It even adds insult to injury by suggesting that the pecorino could be substituted with plain old parmesan (many pasta purists would argue it cannot). A small change, perhaps, but one that has escalated into a full-blown crisis leading to a complaint being lodged at the British embassy, outraged headlines splashed over local papers and Roman chefs up in arms at the bastardisation of a beloved dish. Adding butter to cacio e pepe, they argue, is heresy – as is suggesting that a delicate, surprisingly complicated recipe is both 'easy' and 'speedy'. The creaminess of the sauce must come from the combination of starchy pasta water and pecorino cheese alone. They join a long line of Italians complaining about how the British – and others – treat their cuisine, from mild misdemeanours, like putting cheese on seafood pasta, to the cardinal sin of cream in a carbonara. Paolo Catarinozzi, owner of Zi Umberto, a restaurant specialising in classic Roman dishes in the heart of the capital's Trastevere district, pulls no punches. He describes the Good Food recipe, which appears to have been online for several months but has only now triggered a dispute, as 'disgusting'. 'It is another dish altogether,' he says. 'It is offensive. The English always ruin our recipes, because they try to adapt Italian recipes to please their customers, instead of producing dishes as they should be made.' Catarinozzi runs his restaurant – which serves cacio e pepe as it ought to be served, at least according to his clientele – with his daughter Alice. 'For us it is not just about the food,' she says. 'These are recipes [perfected] by our grandparents – it is about respecting what they gave us, protecting their memories.' Others have gone further still with their criticism. Coldiretti, Italy 's largest farmers' organisation, released a statement that called distorted recipes such as the Good Food's cacio e pepe a 'gastronomic 'gallery of horrors''. Another case is 'spaghetti bolognese, a dish that is practically unknown in traditional Italian cuisine but very popular abroad, especially in the United Kingdom', it continued. Irate Italophiles have always complained about the British take on Italian classics, but not until now has anyone attempted to escalate it to a diplomatic crisis. One disgruntled association of restaurateurs in the Italian capital is so het up about the addition of butter to the Good Food recipe that it has lodged a complaint with the British embassy in Rome. Claudio Pica, president of the Rome branch of the restaurant association Fiepet-Confesercenti, said the recipe is akin to 'us coming to Britain and demanding the finest double malt whisky mixed with lemonade' in a letter addressed to Good Food and diplomats in the capital. The embassy declined to comment when contacted by The Telegraph. Picking up on the tensions, one headline in an Italian newspaper read, 'Butter and parmesan in… cacio e pepe! Stunned! The British embassy informed!' Another, the Rome-based Il Messaggero, quipped: 'Paraphrasing the famous British anthem 'God save the king', Rome restaurateurs are now saying: 'God save the cacio e pepe.'' But is this a valiant battle to protect the heart of Italian cuisine, or just a storm in a saucepan? As Francesco Mazzei, one of the leading Italian chefs in the UK, argues, adding butter is a shortcut, perhaps even a cop-out. 'NO butter,' he says, emphatically. 'Let's put it this way. It's easy to make a cacio e pepe with butter. It's extremely difficult to make a cacio e pepe with no butter.' Mazzei argues that while the recipe might appear to be simple, 'simplicity is also sophistication. You need to know how to do it. It's all about skills and years and years and years of technique.' Not everybody agrees. Conor Gadd, chef-owner at Trullo, a leading Italian restaurant in north London, is 'unapologetic' about his use of butter in his restaurant's version of the dish. He does, however, describe developing his take on the classic as the 'bane of my life'. 'Adding butter isn't traditional, and Italians are the very essence of traditionalism,' says Gadd. 'We played around with it for years, adding pecorino, parmesan, we used egg yolk sometimes, and eventually, we said, 'what are we doing here?' I'm not Italian. I don't have to stick to how my mother taught me to do things.' 'Italian cooking is very simple, very pure, with an innate trust in the quality of ingredients,' he continues. That's all well and good, but 'the reason we would add butter is to adapt it to the British palette'. Quite simply, with a knob of butter, the pasta just tastes better. And, he adds, 'on a cold night in north London, I think people just appreciate a bit of butter'. Perhaps this is exactly why the Good Food concoction does appear to have pleased British home cooks – creamier, potentially tastier, and better suited to our climes. One suspiciously well-placed commenter on the website's recipe page posted: 'I can't believe adding a [little] butter turned this from a boring traditional recipe into something I actually like eating. This is one of those examples where a small update makes all the difference!' Good Food has responded to the uproar by removing a line from the recipe that suggested it includes 'four simple ingredients – spaghetti, pepper, parmesan and butter'. The company said via a spokesman that it has 'been in touch with the Fiepet-Confesercenti association to explain that our recipe is designed to be easy to use for home cooks using readily available ingredients in the UK'. 'With that in mind, we have edited the copy at the start of the recipe to make this clear and we have invited the Roman restaurant association to supply us with an authentic Italian version that we would love to upload and credit to them,' the spokesman added. Some adaptations are indeed necessitated by what's available (or not) on British supermarket shelves, which are not known to be heaving with the finest pecorino and perfectly cured guanciale. However, Britons do have a long and illustrious history of butchering the beloved Italian classics. There was a similar outcry when Mary Berry published a bolognese recipe that included double cream and white wine. Nigella Lawson also found herself in hot water when she had the audacity to put nutmeg and double cream in her carbonara; despite the fact that she adds double cream to nearly everything, she was accused of heralding the 'death of Italian cuisine'. And let's not forget the more recent carbonara crisis, when The New York Times suggested that tomatoes belong in the creamy, silky spaghetti dish. 'Tomatoes are not traditional in carbonara, but they lend a bright tang to the dish,' a piece published by NYT Cooking in 2021 read. Backlash was immediate, and fierce, with some critics arguing the recipe 'should be illegal'. And then there are the Frankensteinian horrors we – or America – have created ourselves: spaghetti and meatballs, ham and pineapple on pizza, and the atrocity that is Heinz tinned carbonara. However, the truth is that many of the recipes heralded as Italian classics have a history – and origin – that is fiercely contested. Luca Cesari, a leading food historian has suggested that according to the first carbonara recipe, unearthed from 1954, the dish should be made with pancetta (bacon) rather than the guanciale (pork jowl) that any self-respecting Italian would insist upon. He received death threats. Alberto Grandi, an Italian academic and pasta myth-buster, has gone so far as to suggest that many of the Italian classics, from pizza to panettone, are either relatively recent inventions or – shock horror – not even Italian recipes at all. He has even claimed that carbonara was an American invention. So, yes, buttery cacio e pepe may be an aberration, or at the very least a shameless adaptation. But if the Italians are at it too, is that really such a crime?
Times
5 days ago
- General
- Times
Italian chefs accuse Good Food of bastardising cacio e pepe recipe
It is one of the simplest Italian pasta dishes, combining black pepper and sharp pecorino cheese, but restaurateurs in Rome have accused Britain's leading recipe brand of bastardising cacio e pepe. In a letter to Good Food and the British embassy in Rome, chefs in the Italian capital complained about the addition of butter and parmesan cheese to a recipe on the Good Food website. 'That's like us coming to Britain and demanding the finest double malt whisky mixed with lemonade,' said Claudio Pica, author of the letter and president of the Rome branch of the restaurant association Fiepet-Confesercenti. 'We demand the recipe, as published, is changed at once,' he said. Cacio e pepe is thought to have been created by shepherds in the hills above Rome. Needing to travel for days with food in their packs, they conjured the dish out of hard, long-lasting, Roman pecorino sheep's cheese, a handful of peppercorns and pasta.
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
I Cook For A Living, And These Are The Trader Joe's Freezer Aisle Staples I Rely On For Cheap, Stress-Free Meals
Trader Joe's is a cult classic for a reason: it's affordable, it's on trend, and pretty much anyone can find something they love among the tiny-but-efficient aisles. Whether you need prepped veggies (I love their mirepoix!), a frozen lunch for work, or a fun snack for your next game night, TJ's has you covered. As a chef, I've come to rely on a handful of their products to make quick and easy meals throughout the week, which I'm often in need of after cooking for work all day. Sometimes, the lowest-effort meals are actually the best, and when it's cheap, too, it's a win-win. These are some of my favorite frozen items that you'll always find in my freezer! Browns Let's start with a real crowd-pleaser: the frozen hash browns. You will never not find these in my freezer, because they're literally my favorite thing to have on my breakfast plate. They're even better than McDonald's hash browns, especially because of their price point — but I think they taste better, too. These are typically $2.99 for a whole pack of 8. Can't beat it. I cook mine in the air fryer while I prep some breakfast sausage and fried eggs, then finish them with a little salt for the perfect hash brown at home. There was a time when they ran out of these hash browns for a few months, and let me just say: thank god that time has passed! Cacio E Pepe This is a little embarrassing to admit, but I've messed up cacio e pepe quite a few times when making it from scratch. For some reason my sauce tends to get clumpy, no matter what trick or method I've tried. I'm still working on that, but in the meantime, I've gotten by with TJ's frozen Spaghetti Cacio E Pepe. As a chef, it feels a bit crazy to recommend a frozen pasta dish, but this one is actually delicious, and I've never had anything like it. All you need to make this baby into a complete meal is a little garlic bread or chicken to go on top. I also really love adding broccoli to this pasta! Ginger Cubes One of my favorite things to cook with is ginger. It adds a nice bit of spice to any dish, whether you're using it in a lemony ginger salad dressing or in a stir-fry sauce. What I don't love is prepping ginger; peeling it is annoying, and it's quite fibrous which makes it hard to grate sometimes. TJ's saves the day by offering frozen cubes of ginger that come in a little plastic tray. When you need some ginger, you can pop out single cubes and keep the rest in the freezer. This is a genius product, in my humble opinion. Style Fried Rice Trader Joe's typically has two types of fried rice in stock: one Chinese version and another Japanese. I am obsessed with their Japanese Fried Rice. It has edamame, carrot, a little bit of tofu, and some seaweed in the mix. I love using this as the base of a quick stir-fry dinner: just cook a protein to go on top, and you have a really quick, filling meal. For budget-friendly recipes and easy dinners, download the free Tasty app, where you can save any of our 7,500+ recipes for the week ahead — no subscription required. Chocolate Croissants Have you tried the frozen TJ's croissants? Because you definitely should. They have a few varieties and they are all super delicious — I really love the double chocolate variety, but even the mini plain croissants are great, too. Just remember that these are best if you thaw them and let them rise at room temperature overnight. It seems like a long time, but it's worth it when you're rewarded with a warm, freshly baked croissant for your perfect brunch at home. Waffles If you can't tell from my favorites list, I'm big on breakfast. So is Trader Joe's, which is probably why I'm always in there. For the longest time, I didn't have a waffle maker, so I soothed my cravings with TJ's Frozen Belgian Waffles. These pop right into the toaster, and trust me when I say the perfect breakfast consists of one or two of these babies with one of those crispy, to-die-for hash browns… and maybe some eggs or bacon for protein. Squash Mac & Cheese This mac and cheese is enough of a meal on its own. Super creamy with some delicious butternut squash in the sauce, this macaroni is always in my cart when I check out. To build out the perfect meal, I'll roast a chicken (also from TJ's, of course -– I love their newer heirloom chickens!), and serve it with this mac and some sauteed spinach or asparagus for a satisfying Sunday supper type of meal. Pastry Pups Any time I'm hosting friends, I hit up the appetizer section in the freezer aisle. The Parmesan Pastry Pups are basically bougie pigs in a blanket, and their crispy little blankets are made of puff pastry. I make these in the air fryer also and sometimes pair them with the samosas or spanakopita for a fun little appetizer board. & Ginger Soup Dumplings Another great option for a quick lunch is the Pork and Ginger Soup Dumplings. They're microwavable and each package comes with 6, which I find to be enough for a light lunch. If I'm trying to make more of a meal out of it, I'll serve them with some of the aforementioned Japanese Fried Rice or a quick salad with smashed cucumber, soy sauce, rice vinegar, and sesame oil. Lava Cakes It'd be weird not to comment on any of the amazing desserts TJ's offers in the frozen aisle, and I had a hard time choosing just one to include (chocolate croissants kinda count, right?). That being said, the Chocolate Lava Cakes are so indulgent and come in handy when you wanna end a meal on a sweet note. I love that these can be microwaved or baked in the oven depending on how much time you have. I do recommend baking them in the oven if you can because they'll get a tiny bit crisper rather than that microwave-steamed texture you get from mug cakes or other microwaveable desserts. These are absolutely divine on their own, but topping them with some vanilla ice cream or whipped cream really puts them over the top. Mention: Mini French Baguettes Okay, one more item to round out this list. The Mini French Baguettes! I love bread, and I make sourdough at home, but that literally takes a day in the fridge to rise, and sometimes I just need a little bit of warm bread to complete a meal. These are so good and crisp up perfectly in the oven, giving you fresh-baked bread vibes at home. Truly delicious with a little salty butter and jam. What's your favorite freezer aisle find at Trader Joe's? Share your go-to's in the comments!
