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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?
Washington Post
11-06-2025
- General
- Washington Post
After pounds of pasta, here's how I made the cacio e pepe of my dreams
Cacio e pepe, in its traditional form, consists of exactly five ingredients: pasta, pecorino Romano cheese, black pepper, salt and water. With such a short list, you might think it would be a cinch to prepare. But as anyone who has tried to make this iteration of the classic Roman dish will attest, that couldn't be further from the truth.
BBC News
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
The Pasta Queen's favourite cacio e pepe in Rome
The cheesy, peppery pasta dish has become as viral as chef Nadia Munno's cooking videos. Here are her favourite places to get it in her hometown of Rome. For Roman chef and businesswoman Nadia Caterina Munno – better known to her five million-strong legion of social media followers as "The Pasta Queen" – the rich pasta dish of cacio e pepe, represents everything she loves about her hometown. "Romans are loud, aggressive, but really friendly. Their friendliness is a form of love," she says. "Roman cuisine is [also] very punchy and aggressive – up [in northern Italy], dishes are more delicate – and cacio e pepe is very traditionally Roman." Indeed, made by simply tossing pasta, Pecorino cheese, hot pasta water and toasted black peppercorns together, cacio e pepe (literally: "'cheese and pepper") is Roman cuisine par excellence: humble, salty and spontaneous. In recent years, the dish has become a firm favourite overseas, with restaurants from New York to London proudly serving their versions of the savoury recipe. It has also become one of the main stars of Munno's larger-than-life home cooking videos, which are peppered with a Sophia Loren-esque theatricality and replete with gushing references to the "pasta gods". Munno's own royal moniker may pose a rather grand claim, but she's hardly a usurper: she heralds from a family that has been producing pasta for centuries, even garnering the nickname of the "Macaronis". "To be a 'pasta queen' you have to have an experience and a background: these are the dishes I cooked all my life," she explains. "I want to teach people about the values of Italian food, which bring people together, to enjoy life a bit more." She adds: "Food shouldn't be treated as an afterthought. Empires were forged on food." And though Rome's history may be imperial, cacio e pepe – much like other classic Roman pasta dishes like carbonara and amatriciana – is a humble dish, deeply rooted in the city's working class culture, with influences from the nearby shepherds who moved to Rome from the Apennine mountains. What may come to a surprise to some is that cacio e pepe is not even one of the most consumed dishes in the Roman kitchen. Its recent popularity, Munno says, is largely a product of social media marketing. "It's not as sought after from Romans as from tourists who come to visit the city," Munno notes. "It's definitely traditional, but cacio e pepereally has gone viral, being popularised internationally." All this notwithstanding, the dish is now a consolidated part of Rome's culinary repertoire, a staple in trattorie and family homes across the city. Here are Munno's favourite places to get cacio e pepe in Rome. 1. Best for eating cacio e pepe like a local: Felice a Testaccio If there's any restaurant in Rome which can legitimately lay claim to being the "king" of cacio e pepe, it's Felice a Testaccio – and Munno recommends going there to experience the dish like a true local. "I liked going to [Felice a Testaccio] because I grew up nearby," Munno says. "It's a place which is popular with the local people, and the food is amazing." For Felice a Testaccio, cacio e pepe is a veritable artform – and one whose creation is displayed to clients, as the mantecatura (emulsification) of the pasta in the Pecorino cheese is performed tableside. Using fresh tonnarelli (thick spaghetti), Felice a Testaccio's cacio e pepeis decadent, sharp and creamy, the Roman dish in its most sumptuous form. As its name suggests, Felice is located in the city's scruffy, vibrant Testaccio neighbourhood, which was built on the remains of an ancient Roman trash heap and the port that serviced the city with its food. Today, the neighbourhood maintains its culinary tradition as the location of the monumental Testaccio food market. "It's one of the main markets of Rome," Munno says. The district, located south of the city centre, doesn't quite reek of "dolce vita" in the postcard-perfect, Hollywood sense – think less Roman Holiday and more graffitied walls and post-war apartment blocks – but it's as quintessentially Roman as it gets, and Munno recommends sinking your teeth into – and its food. "The area doesn't get enough love," Munno says. "But it's very Roman." Website: Via Mastro Giorgio, 29, 00153Phone: + 39 06 574 6800Instagram: @feliceatestaccio 2. Best for a gourmet palate: Roscioli Salumeria con Cucina When it comes to finding a more refined, gourmet-approved take on Roman cuisine, then Roscioli Salumeria con Cucina is your port of call. The restaurant – opened near the Campo de' Fiori street market in 1972 and now part of a local chain of bakeries and eateries – offers sophisticated, yet still authentic, takes on classic Roman and other Italian dishes, within an elegant setting that attracts an exclusive clientele. Its ingredients are sourced from the best suppliers, and its cacio e pepe is no exception. "Roscioli is truly authentic Roman [food]," Munno says. "What they serve is truly amazing." Using fresh tagliolini pasta, Nepalese black pepper and a touch of extra virgin olive oil to help bind the sauce, Roscioli's cacio e pepe is delicate and refined, yet still full of the tangy saltiness of the traditional Roman recipe. "It's incredibly gorgeous," Munno says. Reserve in advance, as bookings can be competitive. Website: Via dei Giubbonari, 21, 00186Phone: +39 06 687 5287Instagram: @rosciolisalumeria 3. Best for a cosy experience: Hostaria da Cesare Hostaria da Cesare, which celebrated its centennial anniversary in 2021, brims with nostalgia, with a distinct "frozen-in-time-feel": a time capsule of what may seem like a bygone era. Warm, wood-panelled interiors give it a distinctly cosy, mid-century charm. Da Cesare's cacio e pepe – one of the city's best, according to Munno – is traditional and rich, made with spaghetti, coated in a flurry of shaved Pecorino and black pepper. Conveniently placed in the central Prati quarter, an elegant, 19th-Century Parisian-esque grid of streets close to the Vatican, Hostaria Da Cesare is centrally located but also somewhat shielded from the tourist throngs. "It isn't particularly touristy, but it's getting more attention," Munno says. Website: Via Crescenzio, 13, 00193Phone: +39 06 686 1227 4. Best for date night: Trattoria Da Teo Trattoria Da Teo doesn't feel like an ordinary restaurant – it feels more like a dining room a family graciously opened up to the public. Deep in the Trastevere district south of the Vatican, Da Teo is set in a neighbourhood which – in spite of its popularity with tourists – has preserved its medieval charm and a fierce community spirit. "Trastevere is magical," Munno says. "It's a crazy neighbourhood which gives you a whole different experience [and] energy." "You have people dancing, clubs, young people, cats," she adds. "The heart and vibe of Rome." Munno believes Da Teo offers a taste of Trastevere's "intense, exhilarating Roman vibe" and recommends going there with a significant other. "Going [there] with a lover is so romantic," she says. Tossed in an especially thick, creamy homestyle sauce, Da Teo's take on the Roman dish feels less like a restaurant serving and more akin to something your nonna would whip you up for Sunday lunch. Website: Piazza dei Ponziani, 7A, 00153Phone: +39 06 581 8355Instagram: @trattoriadateo 5. Best for a unique dining experience: Flavio al Velavevodetto Flavio al Veloavevodetto is perhaps one of the most unique eateries in a city packed with historical oddities, in that it is located quite literally inside an ancient Roman trash heap: the Monte Cocci, a hill made up of discarded amphorae (vases). "It's an incredible experience you can't get anywhere else," Munno says. In spite of its remarkable setting, the restaurant nevertheless makes simple, traditional food for a largely local clientele – and, Munno notes, is a great place to experience dishes like cacio e pepe. "[Flavio] has a typical family style," Munno says. "It isn't super fancy. It's a place for day-to-day Romans, one of those places you can't eat badly." Flavio al Veloavevodetto serves a cacio e pepe which, as Italians would say, is as dio comanda (God wills it) – using thick tonnarelli and abundant Pecorino. While Flavio al Veloavevodetto's flagship is in Testaccio, you can also experience their creations over in a more recently opened branch in the more centrally located Prati district. Munno still recommends the original. "Tourists should come to experience it," she says. Website: Via di Monte Testaccio, 97, 00153 / Piazza dei Quiriti, 4-5,Phone: +39 06 574 4194 / +39 06 3600 0009Instagram: @alvelavevodetto BBC Travel's The SpeciaList is a series of guides to popular and emerging destinations around the world, as seen through the eyes of local experts and tastemakers. -- For more Travel stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
