|
About This Author
Come closer.
|
Carrion Luggage #1095858 added August 24, 2025 at 8:33am
Restrictions: None
Alfredo Their Own Shadows
What's going to finally spark World War III? Ukraine? Middle East? Accidental launch of nukes? No, my money's on this.
Bad enough someone put pineapple on a pizza. Now this.
Italians have reacted with fury after the UK Good Food website published a recipe for a traditional Roman dish that did not include the correct original ingredients and appeared to belittle it as a quick eat.
"What? Why? It's just pasta and cheese. They sell that shit in boxes."
Good Food's recipe described cacio e pepe as a meal that could be whipped up for "a speedy lunch" using "four simple ingredients - spaghetti, pepper, parmesan and butter".
Okay, so it's spaghetti instead of macaroni, but it's still mac & cheese. With some ground pepper.
Fiepet Confesercenti, an association representing restaurants in Italy, said it was "astonished" to see the recipe on such an esteemed food site, owned by the BBC until 2018, adding: "There are not four ingredients, but three: pasta, pepper and pecorino."
I like to think "astonished" is a mistranslation, and an understatement.
Incidentally, I've never prepared cacio e pepe, but from what I understand, building the dish is extraordinarily complicated for something with so few ingredients.
In a statement, Good Food said it has been in touch with Fiepet Confesercenti to "explain that our recipe is designed to be easy to use for home cooks using readily available ingredients in the UK".
Okay, seriously, though: food changes and, like language, sometimes things get lost in translation. The simple solution would be to call it something else. I don't know what. It's the UK, so maybe something like "pepper cheese noodles," or "strings and cheese."
Italians often mock foreigners for their interpretation of their recipes, but the indignation in this case was about something deeper: tampering with tradition.
Shh, no one tell them about what they call "pizza" in Chicago.
"You can do all the variations in the world – but you cannot use the original Italian name for them, said Maurizio. "You cannot say it is cacio e pepe if you put butter, oil and cream in it. Then it becomes something else."
See? Even an Italian agrees with me.
"It's terrible. It's not cacio e pepe... What Good Food published, with butter and parmesan, is called 'pasta Alfredo'. It's another kind of pasta," he said.
Hot take: pasta Alfredo is macaroni and cheese named something else to make it less embarrassing for adults to eat.
On his restaurant's board of pastas, he offers cacio e pepe with lime - a variation. But he says that's ok.
Of course it's okay, because he said so.
Nicola, who runs a sandwich shop near the Vatican, took particular issue with the inclusion of cream.
"Cacio e pepe should not be made with cream; cream is for desserts. For heaven's sake. Whoever uses cream does not know what cooking means."
Nicola, you know nothing of British cuisine. Nothing.
Fortunately, this happened after Britain left the EU, otherwise you'd have Italians demanding that they be kicked out. I do have a solution, though: Italian cooks should introduce "fish and chips" made with anchovies, and let's see how quickly we can start WWIII. |
© Copyright 2025 Robert Waltz (UN: cathartes02 at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
Robert Waltz has granted InkSpot.Com, its affiliates and its syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work. |
