Giorgio Eramo runs a fresh pasta restaurant near St Peter’s square - serving up cacio e pepe and other traditional pasta dishes.
“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.
On his restaurant’s board of pastas, he offers cacio e pepe with lime - a variation. But he says that’s ok.
“It’s different, it’s for the summer, to make the pasta more fresh. But it doesn’t impact the tradition. It’s not like cream or butter. Lime is just a small change.”
While I do agree with the statement that there should not be any butter or Parmesan in cacio e pepe, the fact that this guy adds lime to his and saying it’s still cacio e pepe, just make it sound like as long as Italians do the change, it’s okay.
Otoh calling it “(thing) with lime” is more hobest than calling it “(thing)” and putting lime in yours.
Also, as he points out, the recipe given by bbc is an actual thing with a different name, which is a solid point. It’s like a spelling error into another word that makes sense in context is worse than one where you can still tell what the original wprd was intendd to be.
While I do agree with the statement that there should not be any butter or Parmesan in cacio e pepe, the fact that this guy adds lime to his and saying it’s still cacio e pepe, just make it sound like as long as Italians do the change, it’s okay.
Otoh calling it “(thing) with lime” is more hobest than calling it “(thing)” and putting lime in yours.
Also, as he points out, the recipe given by bbc is an actual thing with a different name, which is a solid point. It’s like a spelling error into another word that makes sense in context is worse than one where you can still tell what the original wprd was intendd to be.