Spaghetti Cacio e Pepe

I've had this recipe for a while now, and I've been dying to write about it here. But no obvious story springs to mind when I think about it, so I've been putting it off. But I can't any longer. It's just so good, I feel it is selfish to keep it to myself any longer.

I first had it at an Italian restaurant where a friend works. The restaurant's ideology is simple, traditional food.
My friend had the cook come out and tell me how to make the dish. It's incredibly easy, and incredibly delicious.

Spaghetti Cacio e Pepe

I don't have exact measurements here. I just eyeball how much of what goes in. Actually, when I asked the cook how much cheese he uses per dish, he scoffed, "how ever much you need."

Cook your spaghetti. Reserve some cooking water.

Heat a large, heavy skillet over high heat. Once hot, add a few glugs of olive oil. Crack in some fresh pepper. You need quite a lot of this as you want it to cover the pasta (I hope this is clear in the pictures).

Once scalding hot, reduce to medium-low heat and toss in the spaghetti. Toss to cover pasta with oil.

Add a few handfuls of pecorino cheese (preferably good quality pecorino toscano), stir to melt. Add reserved cooking water if needed.

Enjoy!

Mr. Terry's Chocolate Orange Cake Disaster

Ugh.



Ugh always needs an answer. "How are you?" "Ugh." "Aw, what's wrong?"
Meh doesn't get this kind of treatment. "How are you?" "Meh." "I hear that!"

Well today I am feeling ugh, and I'm not going to answer for it.

What I do have to discuss, however, is a certain little cake I mentioned in my last post, Mr. Terry's chocolate orange cake. There he is, up at the top. I mentioned that I was going to bake the cake for the food bank volunteer party, which I did. Things went smoothly with the cake, though I baked it a little too long. But, then came the icing. I melted some chocolate, and in an effort to make it smoother I added cream. Maybe you were already aware of this, but cream does NOT make melted chocolate smoother or creamier. Instead, it makes the melted chocolate coagulate. Not that that's bad, but it was just a bit of a surprise.

Well, I didn't have any extra chocolate so this would have to do. It didn't taste bad, it just wasn't the most attractive thing I've ever seen on top of a cake. Then again, I'm not about fussy, pretty cakes. So I slapped the chocolate on top and spread it around.

A little homely looking, but what's wrong with that? Nothing, I say.

So I walked my little cake over to the food bank (which in the rain, is not the easiest thing to do), with the wind smothering my face with delicious gusts of chocolate scent.

I arrived with Mr. Terry safe in my arms and placed him on the counter. Now, I have tried to keep this blog here a peaceful zone. It's to revel in food and the good times. No negativity, please. But to explain this story I have to tell you that the man involved, well, there's only one word to describe his type. He's a bit of a jackass.
 He walked over to my cake, leaned over it, and said, "I wasn't going to say anything, but...."
What does this mean, I wondered? I didn't say anything to prompt this, so what exactly happened that led him to say what he had intended to keep unsaid. Nothing. Nothing at all. Because jackasses don't need instigation to share their mean little remarks. Unlike the rest of us, they enjoy spewing their nastiness upon the innocents.
Of course,  I came to Mr. Terry's defence. "Oh yes, the chocolate did not turn out how I intended it to. I meant for it to be smoother..."
"I wasn't going to say anything.." (again! with a little smirk across his lips) "I'm sure it tastes good," he said with skepticism.
"I hope so," I said. "We'll see."
This is when he offered some advice (or maybe sabotage?!) that in hindsight, I have no idea why I listened to.
"You should heat a spoon over an open flame, until it's scalding hot, and then smooth the chocolate with it."
Silly me, I took that scalding spoon and rubbed it slowly all over my cake. The result? Seriously burned chocolate, and an ever uglier cake (if it was ugly to begin with... I prefer to call it rustic). Another volunteer walked in and said, "something's burning." She was on the other side of the room. Yes, it was that bad.
To top it off, the coordinators gave out awards to each volunteer. I won "Best Baker" award, because I made the dessert for the Christmas party. Well, another volunteer made amazing cupcakes for the party on Thursday. People were raving about them. At the end of the night, as the cupcake baker and I were chatting about our awards (she was asking me about how I won "Best Baker"), the people leaving were walking past us and telling her how amazing her cupcakes were.
Embarrassing? Very much so.

Too much time, too little to do...

Procrastination has never been a problem for me. But, BUT, I have never had a blog until recently, and blog writing has proven to be the chink in my procrastination armour. I cook all the time. Perhaps a little more than I really should, and yet when I sit down with my laptop I find it a real struggle to come up with a topic. This is very, very disturbing, given the fact that I used to take some pride in my writing and timeliness. My only suggestion to myself is to keep writing no matter how hard it seems. How original?
Since December I have been volunteering at a food bank. This Thursday we are having a party for all of the volunteers, and I was asked to bake a cake. I wanted something original, but easy to throw together, and then I remembered a marmalade pudding cake that I made from Nigella's new (kinda) book, Kitchen. 
I first made it back in November and it turned out kinda good. Great flavour, but the texture was off, and it was lacking a little something. The recipe calls to bake it in a 1x24cm square pyrex dish, which made the cake pretty slim and dense, as it did not rise at all when baking. You use quite a lot of marmalade and orange zest in the batter, and so the chewy, orangey strands didn't have anywhere to hide in the pyrex dish. It was all out there in the open, if that makes sense.
I knew with a little tweaking the recipe could be a classic. I remembered the flavour was great: very orangey, but nothing bitter or too intense. But the texture was just too dry and dense for my liking. So for my second journey with the recipe I decided to bake the batter in muffin trays. I got exactly what I wanted: the batter raised as it baked allowing a lighter, more sponge cakey finish. The zest and marmalade completely disappeared, so there was no chewy interruption.
Since I now had a cupcake in my hands, instead of pudding cake, I obviously had to come up with some icing. I'm not a big fan of cakes towered with super-sweet icing, so I decided to keep it simple, since the cake is really the star of this show.
I melted some fine quality bittersweet chocolate (added a little cream as needed) and poured it from a tablespoon over the top of the cooled cupcake, allowing the chocolate to run down the sides.
I'm pretty proud of this adaptation. With a few little tweaks the pudding cake becomes an entirely different dessert. If I didn't know any better I would never have guessed they were the exact same batter.
And so now I present to you the recipe for Terry's Chocolate Orange Cupcakes (or just cake), because this is exactly what they taste like:

250g soft unsalted butter
75 g white sugar
75g light brown sugar
150g marmalade
225g flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder 
4 eggs
zest and juice of 1 orange

Put all the ingredients into a food processor. Process until smooth and then pour into buttered, or lined, muffins trays (I believe I got about 12 muffins).
Put in oven at 350F, and bake for about 20 minutes. Toothpick should come out clean from middle of cakes.
Remove cakes from try and allow to cool .
Melt chocolate (semi or bittersweet) in a bowl over simmering water. Add cream as needed. Pour gently from a spoon over the tops of the cakes. It should run down the sides a little.

I'm going to bake this as a cake on Thursday, which I imagine will need about 40 minutes in the oven.
If you want to give the original recipe a try, bake at 350F for 40 minutes in a buttered pyrex dish. Cool in tray. Melt 75g and juice of half an orange in a small saucepan, and then paint the top of the cake for a glazed finish.

Enjoy!