CACIO E PEPE

When we go to our favourite restaurant Gola, Arabella and I always order their Cacio e Pepe dish. Since Olympia was born we haven't been able to go out for dinner as regularly as we used to so last Friday night I decided to try and cook this pasta. The recipe comes from Olive magazine and it looked pretty quick and easy, you also end up with a side of garlic oil for salads or pastas.

Ingredients for 2 people:

200ml sunflower oil (I used olive as that is what we had in the cupboard)
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
80g butter
1 tbsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tbsp of oregano (I used dried but you could use fresh and chopped)
50g Parmesan, finely grated
250g spaghetti

Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil and add the pasta and cook according to the packet's instructions. Ours took ten minutes.

Meanwhile pour the oil into a frying pan and add the garlic and cook for a couple of minutes until the garlic changes to a golden colour. As soon as this happens, strain it through a metal sieve into a heatproof bowl. I didn't read the metal part and managed to kill our sieve!!

Anyway shake off any excess oil from the garlic and then spread it on kitchen roll to cool down and set the oil to one side.

At the same time, in a frying pan add the butter, black pepper, oregano and a splash of cooking water and cook on a low to medium heat until all melted.

When the pasta is ready, drain and then put it back in the pan with the butter mixture. Add the Parmesan, but don't stir it. You want it to sit and melt from the heat of the pan otherwise it can turn into cheesy balls (although that sounds good to me too)! I didn't have the patience to wait for it all to be melted but I did 75% of it.

Add the golden garlic and season to taste - we added a little salt. Mix all together.

Finally serve immediately with an extra sprinkling of Parmesan.

I am afraid to say that for me this wasn't as good as Gola's cacio e pepe but I think that is because their sauce is a lot creamier. Pascal, on the other hand, preferred it as he doesn't particularly like cream. The whole recipe was very quick and easy and I love that it barely used any ingredients. I think you could also add a few chillis if you wanted to spice it up a bit. I like that we now have some leftover garlic oil too - I remember when I was a child, I used to visit a restaurant in Lanzarote that did a salad with just lettuce, lardons and garlic oil - so I am going to be trying that this week!