Looks great!
My perhaps overly critical feedback: it looks like your pasta is very short, did you break it before cooking? Also, photos (the quality of which is a major contributor in a foodporn context) look better when the pasta is sitting neatly on the plate, learning to nest it could help make the pics look even better.
Well done, I'm sure it tasted amazing.
Thank you so much for the feedback and resource! Plating pasta is something I'm slowly working on improving as I get better tools for the job.
There was no broken pasta, but it was just barely al dente. The strands still had enough body that the ends were able to resist gravity, but I do think that proper plating will help me soften the overall shape and help me avoid that spiky profile that makes it look like I committed the ultimate pasta sin. :)
What's your recipe/technique for this? Whenever I make it I can only ever succeed in clumping up the pecorino (although I have to use gluten free pasta which maybe contains less starch than regular pasta). Doesn't stop it from being very tasty but I want to be able to do it properly!
The gluten free pasta is likely it. I use a ton of pasta water when making these dishes and the cheese dissolves into the sauce.
Try mixing in a little potato starch slurry into the pasta water after the pasta is cooked and see if that helps.
Thank you for the comment! This was what I was trying to comment but couldn't find the right words.
Starched pasta water is like a secret roux that underpins Italian pasta dishes. You can swap that starch for another, but skipping the starch entirely breaks the sauce.
My wife and I had the same issue when we started out. We’ve solved it two different ways.
Option 1: Use 3 parts pecorino romano, 1 part parmesano, mix in a bowl and then slowly add to pasta while vigorously stirring (pasta should be very hot still to melt cheese)
Option 2 (my personal preference): Combine a bit of cacio y pepe recipe with a bit of carbonara recipe :)
Mix your cheese with egg (we use 3 eggs + 1 yolk, 3oz pecorino romano, 1oz parm) until it’s a slurry. Add pepper to the mixture. Then add to pasta and stir vigorously.
You're missing the main ingredient to make it creamy: cooking water.
You need to mix the cheese with one ladelful of water (picked when the pasta is almost ready so there's some gluten in it).
Then drain the pasta and stir it in the sauce.
If you don't do that there's pretty much no way to avoid clumps.
There’s the OG way of putting the hot pasta into a hollowed out cheese wheel, or for the majority of us.. use a microplane with a block of cheese to get thinner slices that melt easily
Give this video a watch!
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I've noticed adding just a little olive oil to the grated cheese while you mash, before adding the pasta water seems to help the cheese from clumping. Especially if you're doing larger servings.
Just want to put this out there in case anybody is struggling with the sauce breaking, use an immersion blender if you have one! You can google it, there are a few variations on how to do it, but it works like a charm!
It’s a solid recipe.
Beautiful.
It's soo simple, but soooo good.
