Cacio e Pepe with Asparagus

I am a huge fan of easy and quick recipes! Who isn’t? 🙂 I mean, I enjoy spending a lot of time in the kitchen, creating yummy food. However, quick recipes are a must – especially if you’re a mom of two very energetic monkeys! 🙂 And I would say that cacio e pepe falls into the category of quick – if you know what you’re doing.

So, what is cacio e pepe? I can only tell you the general overview here, as I’m not a pasta expert. I’ll tell you what I know. Cacio e pepe literally translates to cheese and pepper. That should give you a general idea. The two main ingredients in this dish are just that: cheese and pepper. It’s a Roman pasta dish and if you go to Rome, do as the Romans do! 😉

Let’s talk about the ingredients for a second here. It goes without saying that you need the absolute freshest ingredients for this dish. If you read the recipe, you’ll notice that everything is freshly grated and cracked and what have you.

I’m not sure if you can use any kind of cheese for this dish. Any Italians here? Maybe you can help enlighten us? I’ve only ever used pecorino for this dish. Mainly because it’s “creamy”, not as hard as parmigiano-reggiano and thus much easier to grate (Hello, lazy cooks! :D). Let me explain: here in Vienna, it’s not very easy to get your hands on already grated pecorino. You almost never find it in your local grocers/supermarket. So I usually grate it myself. Besides, grating the cheese yourself means it’s fresh and will give you the most of its taste and the most luscious creamy sauce without having to use any cream. Does that make sense?

Now, as I’ve mentioned it’s a quick recipe and fairly easy. However, it’s a high maintenance dish, if I may put it that way. It’s not the kind of dish that you put on the stove and leave it bubbling away merrily while you check your social media feed or fold the laundry or do the dishes. It’s active cooking from start to finish. If you’re down with that, it’s smooth sailing. But it’s still a quick recipe. So there’s no hours on end active cooking required here. 🙂

The first thing you’ll want to do is wash and cut your asparagus into chunks – this is where I break with tradition. I have never had any cacio e pepe that’s served with anything else. But I was at my local grocer and it’s asparagus season. Can you blame me? Anyway, wash and cut asparagus and set it aside. Then you’re going to get your water for the pasta going. I always add generous amount of salt to my pasta water, this way I don’t have to season my sauce with extra salt. For this dish, however, I do want to add more salt than usual. Because this is the only time I’m going to season this dish, literally. You’re going to shorten the pasta cooking time by 2-3 minutes. For example, when the packaging says 9 minute, you’re going to cook the pasta for 6-7 minutes.

While waiting for the pasta water to come to a rolling boil (also while the pasta is cooking), you can grate your cheese. Grating the cheese will help you melt it (I’ll talk about this in minute) before it hits the pan so that you won’t end up with clumpy sauce. Nobody likes clumpy sauce…

Also, this is where I’ll start my other pan going by heating it on medium heat and toasting the freshly cracked black pepper.

By the time you’ve grated all your cheese, your pasta should be ready and your pepper should be toasted. Before draining the pasta, however, reserve 2 cups of the starchy pasta water. You’re going to need it to melt the cheese. Add the still hot water to the cheese and mix it until the cheese is semi-melted. You will still be able to see some clumps, but that’s okay. This is the beginning of your creamy cheese sauce! 🙂 While you’re mixing the cheese and water, add the asparagus to your pan and sauté for 3-5 minutes or until the asparagus has turned bright green.

Turn your heat to medium low and add your pasta and a bit of the cheese water mixture. Keep stirring until the cheese has melted and you see no lumps. The key is to keep stirring the pasta. Add more of the cheese water mixture and repeat the process until all of the mixture has been added to your pasta and the sauce is creamy and smooth. If at this point your pasta looks a little dry, feel free to add more of the starchy water a little bit at a time. Remember, you can always add but never take out.

That’s it. As you can see, it’s fairly easy but very high maintenance. But if you get everything right, there should be no reason at all why you shouldn’t have the perfect spring-y pasta dish for dinner/lunch! 😉

I hope you try it and if you have any questions, let me know in the comments and I’ll try to get back to you ASAP.

Cheers, Revi