Tuna Cacio e Pepe

[Celerity]

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1027149-tuna-cacio-e-pepe

https://archive.ph/Hirkh



It’s hard to resist a quick, five-ingredient recipe, especially when it yields such a comforting meal. While fish paired with cheese is often deemed unconventional, in the right context, the two can complement each other in a memorable way. Canned albacore tuna is sprinkled in this cheesy cacio e pepe pasta for added protein, making the final dish more filling and satisfying. When it comes to emulsifying the often-temperamental sauce, the recipe offers two tips to nail it every time: Boil the pasta in a smaller-than-usual amount of water to really concentrate the starch level, then blend the cheese with the starchy pasta water like chef Luciano Monosilio does, letting your blender do the emulsifying for you. The result is a luscious, silky pasta ready to be paired with a crisp, cold glass of white wine. Watch Carolina Gelen make this dish in this video.





Preparation..............

snip

[Diamond_Dog]

1. I wonder if

You could blend the cheese and the pasta water with a wire whisk in the pot instead of using a blender.

[justaprogressive]

2. yup

it's not a better emulsification, just quicker.

Chefs have limited time...

[sir pball]

3. Still too "inefficient" for such a simple dish...

One of the lures of cacio e pepe is how quick and easy it is; using a blender or even building the sauce in the pan without the pasta goes against the ethos…drop the noodles in a sauté pan, toss it hard while adding cheese and water, and finish with a generous five or six twists of black pepper. One pan, under a minute from when the pasta comes out of the water to when it hits the plate.

Having made it 100s of times on the line, there's two tricks: the extra-concentrated pasta water is definitely one of them, but the real key is to have your cheese grated as fine as possible, almost to dust–the ideal way is with a microplane, even if it is a bit labor-intensive. If the cheese is virtually powdered, it melts in so quickly and evenly that it doesn't take much mechanical work. Also ideal for Alfredo, even if that's not quite so traditional.