Hello, friends of Italia Squisita! I'm Luciano Monosilio and today we're in Campo dei Fiori to talk about a dish, Cacio and pepper, that challenged even a famous American food
YouTuber like Andrew Rea. I know lots among you expected a savage reaction. I'm talking for Italia Squisita, these times, for these kinds of reactions, is over. It has been a game for us, but it is now becoming a trend that might be giving a wrong image of Italian chefs and cuisine. This is why we are now moving to my restaurant, where we're showing you other recipes for cacio and pepper, where I'll be revealing you some secrets to avoid the "botch" Andrew Rea made in his video. Let's now start our cacio and pepper
itinerary from the most traditional way, meaning a classic recipe made of 3
ingredients only: pepper, pecorino and pasta. First passage: let's throw our spaghetti
in lightly salted water. Once we threw our spaghetti, let's move onto the toasting
of the pepper. A hot pan. Peppercorns. To toast pepper correctly, we'll need two to three minutes. Once we will feel that the pan starts heating up and the pepper starts frying lightly, we're moving it away
from the flame and leaving it to rest. Please, before grinding the pepper, it's important for it to be cold.
A key passage in the classic recipe is to save a bit of cooking water.
This is maybe one of the first mistakes Andrew Rea made in his
video - adding water that is too hot inside the cheese. If the water is too hot, indeed, it might make our cheese stringy. Now, second passage. Once we collected and put the water on one side, let's take a pan and put Roman pecorino inside. Let's grind the pepper. Once we ground our toasted peppercorns
with a pepper mill, let's add the water we previously put on one side. With the help of a rubber spatula, let's stir it. Let's stir our Roman
pecorino well, together with pepper and water. Andrew, as you can see,
our sauce is not stringy now. This is because we obtained
an ideal temperature for the water. Another common mistake is to add too much water, as this, later,
during the creaming phase, will create another problem,
so we'll have to put the pan on the flame again to then obtain a
thicker sauce. This will greatly raise the temperature, so the cheese will become stringy again. When the pasta is cooked,
we're draining it, but let's make another step
and put it in a bowl first to lower the thermal excursion that happens when we add the pasta inside the sauce. Let's remove our pot of water and put the cacio
and pepper sauce on a stove, adding our spaghetti inside, strained and dried. Let's give it a first creaming. At this point,
once it's well mixed out of the flame, we'll give it a bit of heat, so we'll put it back on the flame and cream it, being careful not to reach that famous temperature, meaning over 70 degrees, that makes the cheese stringy. Once our pasta is creamed and hot we'll finish it, always out of the flame,
with a dusting of pecorino. Let's finish the creaming and, as you can see, our pasta,
the traditional cacio and pepper, is creamy and not stringy. Let's plate it and make a nice nest and finish it with another dusting
of Roman pecorino and ground black pepper. Toasted, obviously. The traditional cacio and pepper is done. Let's start with the second recipe, this is called exactly 'the foolproof cacio and
pepper', it's my version, the one that I use in my own restaurant to deal with greater numbers. It just needs a small trick, so there's a little secret. We're creating a starch gel. Let's start by placing
the water on the flame. Corn starch. It's very important, when adding corn starch to the water,
for the water to be cold. Once we add the corn starch into the cold water, we're bringing it to a boil. What do we need this for? This starch gel binds, meaning it creates a bridge
between the fat and water molecules that are inside the cheese, and makes it so that the cheese doesn't get stringy. So, even when we get to
temperatures such as 90-100°C, our sauce will never get stringy. We're creating this starch gel.
It's important for you to know that the starch gel will not modify the taste of our cacio and pepper, it will just help making it smoother instead, and will make it possible
to serve it at a higher temperature, so we'll obtain a cacio and pepper that won't be at room temperature this time, but
served at a slightly higher temperature. It's ready. Let's allow our corn starch
gel to cool down and move to the preparation of the cheese mix. For this recipe, we're using two cheeses: Roman pecorino and grana. Let's start from grana. We're adding it inside a blender. Roman pecorino. As you can see, this recipe
for the sauce is very abundant, this is because we're making it
for the restaurant service already. The second passage is to close the blender and give it a first mix. So, let's mix our cheeses well add the ground pepper that, in this case, is not toasted. Let's close the blender again and mix it while we finish the preparation for our sauce. Let's boil the water, then lightly salt it and bring it to a boil. Let's finish our sauce by adding extra virgin olive oil. Always using the blender at a medium speed, we're adding the starch we prepared and allowed to cool. The sauce is done.
As you can see, it's nice and creamy. We're storing it inside a bowl. At this point let's throw the spaghetti in the water. Our pasta is ready, and just as we did before, we're straining it. Let's take a steel pan, put it back on the heat.
Obviously, the heat is off, not on. Two spoonfuls, I always suggest one per person. Let's add some cooking water. With the help of a spatula,
we're stirring everything. Once everything is well incorporated, meaning the cacio and pepper cream
incorporated well with the cooking water, we're pouring the pasta we strained before. Let's mix everything well. Let's add another ladleful of cooking water and turn the heat under the pan on again. The cacio and pepper sauce is boiling, so what I was telling you before is all true: here's a cheese sauce that doesn't get stringy. Andrew, as you can see,
you forgot the gel in the recipe, but the result is equally good!
My recipe is foolproof! Once we cream it and bring it
to the right temperature, we're dusting it with pepper and at this point
our flawless cacio and pepper is ready to be plated. And we'll finish it with grated pecorino
and ground pepper. And our flawless cacio and pepper is done! We're now at the third and last recipe:
a gourmet cacio and pepper, a homage to a great Italian chef, Riccardo Camanini. You'll find
the recipe for cacio and pepper by Riccardo Camanini on Italia Squisita's book, just as many other recipes by many other chefs.
Differently from the English version, I wanted to show you the Italian version, that features my carbonara on the cover. In this recipe, the ingredients are more or less the ones in the
traditional recipe, with a small addition of extra virgin olive oil only and a peculiar ingredient, a pork bladder. This bladder can't obviously be used as dry,
it needs to be re-hydrated in water for at least 12 hours instead,
and then changing the water every hour.
When the 12 hours, 13 hours are over, we can use it. This is the end result. With the help of a funnel,
we're adding the cheese, the extra virgin olive oil and the ground pepper. And we're filling our bladder with rigatoni. Let's add some cold water. Let's close the bladder well. This phase of closing the bladder is very important, because the steam that the cooking will produce
doesn't have to escape once we close it. Once it's closed, we're bringing the water to a boil
and immerse the bladder. As you can see, it's blowing up and at this point, we'll start basting it with some water, so as to let all of the humours out and into our cacio and pepper. It's very important to understand the cooking
times. With this kind of procedure we're taking double the time that is indicated on the pasta box. When the cooking time is done,
we're left with the last passage.
We're taking our bladder out. Let's shake our cacio and pepper well
inside our bladder and at this point we're ready to serve it. We're placing it on a plate and
we're opening it with the help of a knife. Once all of the ingredients
are well mixed and incorporated, we're ready to serve it in a plate. Using this type of cooking,
pasta will get a consistency that is totally different
from the one we know. It's going to be much firmer
to the bite inside, so we're going to find
a pasta that is very much al dente inside, with a softness on the outside that gives it this very peculiar creaminess. What is the bladder giving to this dish? It obviously enhances it with humours and flavors that are different
from the traditional cacio and pepper. And here is cacio and pepper in a bladder by Riccardo Camanini. So, Andrew, did we solve this mess? I hope my advice will be useful,
both for you and our friends of Italia Squisita, at home. Big greetings from Campo dei Fiori and happy cacio and pepper, everyone!
Babish: tries to make "traditional" cacio e pepe with limited success
This guy: schools him by using corn starch and a blender but does it while speaking Italian
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I'm honestly not sure who is winning the Authenticity Wars at this point and I don't think I care. This is a cool method tho
Thank god. Babish's Botched video didn't actually tell me very clearly how to do the cacio e pepe.
I use bacon in carbonara and Italy can get used to it.
I am not a fan of this gatekeeping culture in food.
You come at The King you'd better have ... a ... lot of ... parmesan.
The reaction videos that channel made over rhe yeard were (most of the time) funny, but it's also nice to see them go for a different approach from now on
I've attempted to make cacio e pepe but it is not easy no matter how many different methods there are.
Babbish learns how to cook the same way newbs learn how to Linux.