Prep 5 min - cook 15 min - serves 2
Emmer Pasta Cacio e Pepe
Three ingredients and one hazard: cheese that seizes into strings the moment the pan is too hot.
Before you cook
Cacio e pepe fails in exactly one way, and it is heat. Cheese meeting a hot pan clumps into rubber instead of melting into cream.
Work off the heat, use water that has stopped steaming furiously, and add the cheese in stages rather than all at once.
Method
Crack the peppercorns coarsely so they release aroma without turning to dust.
Toast the cracked pepper in a dry pan for thirty seconds until fragrant.
Boil the pasta in less water than usual so the starch concentrates.
Grate the cheese as finely as you can, because coarse shreds clump.
Ladle hot pasta water into the pepper pan and let it stop bubbling hard.
Drain the pasta two minutes early and add it to the warm pepper water.
Take the pan off the heat entirely before any cheese goes near it.
Add the cheese in three additions, tossing hard between each one.
Loosen with more pasta water until the sauce turns creamy and coats the strands.
Serve straight away, because this sauce tightens as soon as it cools.
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