(upbeat music)
When I first met my husband John,
well the first year we were together,
I offered to cook him a special birthday dinner.
And I said I'll make you anything
in the world that you want.
I'll make you Lobster Thermidor
or a perfect steakhouse supper.
What do you want for your birthday?
Every birthday, Valentine's Day, special occasion,
any anniversary of anything, for now 18 years we've been
together, 13 we've been married,
I have to make carbonara for John, it's his go-to pasta.
Carbonara is just bacon and eggs, pancetta or guanciale,
and eggs with pasta and cheese.
It's a very simple, straightforward recipe.
It does not have cream in it.
It doesn't have all the other loops and things
that people add to it.
Once you take it away from bacon and eggs,
it's no longer carbonara.
Equally simple is what I'm going to show you guys today,
but it's got a twist to it.
Today we're gonna make cacio e pepe.
It's kind of in the top 10 for sure.
Not just for John, but for my whole family.
And cacio is sheep's milk cheese,
pecorino romano, is a type of cacio.
So traditionally this is a dish that's made with cacio,
so salty, delicious grated pecorino cheese,
e pepe, pepper, coarse black pepper.
Of course you need to marry that with the pasta, so really
you're talking about three ingredients.
What I do that's a little different for cacio e pepe
is I toast the pasta.
I toast the raw spaghetti, in this case, until it's deep
deep, deep brown and super fragrant and when it's done,
it tastes like pasta had a love baby with toasted nuts.
(crowd laughs)
It's so good!
So, to toast the pasta I have a combination of EVOO,
extra virgin olive oil, three turns of the pan.
Moderate heat, nice medium flame, on the stove.
When the olive oil starts to ripple, I add in
three tablespoons or three pats of butter.
When the butter bubbles and begins to foam,
then you add your pasta and toast it until it's super dark.
One pound of good quality spaghetti is what we're using.
And then we're going to add the first of our two star
ingredients, our pepper.
So we're gonna add about a tablespoon,
so three fat pinches of coarse black pepper.
Oh my God, it smells so good already,
and I haven't done anything!
So now we're gonna let this toast in a big wide skillet
until that's really deep, deep, deep brown.
See how dark brown that is?
And that makes this really nutty and super fragrant.
When it gets to this color, then you can add in
one quart of water and turn the heat up a little bit,
and bring that water up to a boil.
Then we're going to cook this, stirring it occasionally,
to develop the starches, we're gonna cook this about six
to seven minutes, and then we're going to add in our
cheese for the last two minutes of cook time.
That's what's going on there.
Normally when we make any sort of pasta dish,
you reserve the starchy cooking water to marry
the pasta to the sauce.
Essential in making the sauce and the pasta
kind of get along.
In this case of course, we cooked the pasta in the skillet
with just one quart of water, so we don't have
that starchy cooking water to work with.
But I want you to start adding the cheese
when there's still a little bit of liquid left in the bottom
of the pan, and two minutes less
than the package directions.
So if the package says cook for nine minutes,
start adding the cheese to the pasta around
seven minutes and stir for two minutes.
You with me?
'Cause you need that time to build the sauce from that last
little bit of starch and water altogether.
My God, I can't even make a sentence,
this smells so good.
I'm like, whatever, figure it out for yourselves.
Just look at the pan. (laughs)
But look, look at that.
Oh, it's just incredible that just three ingredients
cheese, black pepper and pasta can smell so good.
It's just incredible.
And you can literally make this, literally I bet you,
80% of the people in this room have all of these ingredients
already at home.
And of course you can use parm cheese
if you don't have the pecorino.
And we have our beautiful, refreshing minty salad
to go along with it.
And I serve it right from the pan.
Just take it right to the table.
(crowd applauds)
Wow.
(crowd cheering)