Help....I'm actually asking this question a bit after the fact! But I bought a nice, large wedge of pecorino about a month ago; used half and popped the rest in the freezer. I don't know why I did that; I could easily have put it away in the fridge and the cheese probably would have been fine for several weeks(I think I had too much wine at dinner that night!)
Anyway, I was planning to cook some cacio e pepe for a few friends this weekend. Would the frozen pecorino work okay, or will it be too unstable? Cacio e pepe is so tricky to begin with; I find it hard to get everything just right (the amount of pasta water and so on) so that the cheese melts enough to coat the spaghetti!
As it happens, when I have more cheese than I think I can keep in the fridge, I DO freeze it.
But I always grate it first. Then I triple bag it in ziplock bags.
I'm sure that this process is COMPLETELY illegal. But it works for me.
Deborah Horn In a previous life I was an Umbrian sunflower farmer. I want to do a past life regression and stay there. ----------------------------------- www.petsburg.com My blog: Old Shoes - New Trip
Posts: 5111 | Location: St. Louis, MO | Registered: 04 September 2001
I freeze cheese all the time. When I get cheddar, I tend to get a lot of cheddar, then nothing for a year. I have had it change texture one time, other wise it has been fine. It does need to come totally to fridge temperature or it will usually crumble.
Deborah, I am starting to be the princess of the freezer!
I do freeze cheese too when it is to much of it, but I grate it first as Deb.
You know when you buy too much prosciutto crudo and you want to eat it within two days or it gets mushy? At the end of the first day, if it is not all eaten, I grind it and freeze it.
It is excellent for a lot of recipes, I just do not defrost it before cooking it, toss it like that in the pan.
Cacio e pepe is not that difficult at all.
Boil a large quantity of water -rule say 100gr pasta 1 litre of water 10 gr coarse salt. Put the pasta in when it is boiling. Cook the pasta very al dente -has to have bite.
Aside heat oil and garlic- but some do butter only, I don't- Grate a good quantity of pecorino cheese and a generous amount of...let's see....PEPPER!!
Pasta is slightly undercooked? Great.
Drain it and toss it in the pan with the oil, add all the chese and pepper, add a small ladle of pasta water if you think is too dry, you should not need to add salt because the pecorino is salty already, but all can be adjusted to your taste.
When I freeze cheddar I always freeze it as a large block, thinking that grating it would cause it to..I don't know...dry out isn't the right word, but that it wouldn't stay good for as long if it were grated. Is there a good reason to think that grating it before freezing is better?
Lately I ahve been storing cheese using teh fiidsaver - it seems to last for months in the fridge once all of the air is sucked out and the bag is seraled.
I used to freeze cheese often (although never pecorino - I'm still using the piece I bought 3 months ago) when I did I just placed it in a zip lock and chucked it into the freezer. Afterwards it was mainly good for grating because it crumbled. The idea of grating it first and then freezing it is a great one (no pun intended).
Here is a site with a recipe for cacio e pepe - looks good.
Jerry
The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see. ~G.K. Chesterton
Jerry, that looks a lot like the recipe that I`ve been using, altho Alessandra`s method sounds good, too!
But Palma, I`ll post my recipe tonight -- I`m just on a pause from my French classes right now!
Colleen, I`ve been finding cacio e pepe a bit tricky because it`s so simple a dish that there`s nowhere to hide (or nothing to hide behind) if you make a mistake! For example, the first time I tried it last month, I didn`t remember that shouldn`t drain the pasta entirely and that I should keep a bit of the boiling hot pasta water to help melt the cheese just a bit so it will stick to the spaghetti. So I just grabbed some hot tap water, but it wasn`t hot enough and the pasta was too dry for the cheese to really coat the spaghetti.
The second time, I used too small a dish for mixing everything, so a lot of the cheese wound up in the bottom (did I mention I`m not a good cook -- to impatient)
My recipe also includes a warning to not grate the cheese too finely, because I guess it would then melt too much. It seems the ideal is to keep the cheese a bit coarse so it doesn`t become a gooey sauce but has a bit more of a texture with bits of cheese and pepper clinging to the pasta!
So, do people think it would be best to thaw the cheese for several hours in the fridge before I grate it, rather than grating the frozen wedge? I think that`s what Judith is suggesting would be best.
So...the concensus seems to be that grated cheese freezes just fine? Parmigiano as well? If so, I'm gona get started grating!
As for saving a bit of the pasta water, that's a trick I learned several years ago and I have to say that it's one of the easiest and BEST cooking tips I've ever gotten! I usually just sccop a ladleful of water out of the pot right before I drain it...or sometimes I'll just scoop the pasta right from the pot and into the pan where I'm cooking the sugo or whatever.
Again, showing how little I know about cooking, I only recently learned about the many wonderful uses for pasta water!! I first read about using the water when I found this cacio e pepe receipe about a month ago. Then, about a week later, I saw an old Jamie Oliver rerun where he was cooking some fab pasta dish and ladled in some pasta water.....clearly, this is a useful cooking trick that I should have learned a long time ago.
As an aside, when I was a young teenager in small-town Alberta in the 1970s, girls still had to take several years of home economics in school, and it was a complete waste of time! I mean, what can I possibly do with my hard-earned knowledge of how to make a blanc mange or section (and broil, with coconut) a grapefruit. Or how to iron pillowcases? Honestly -- my old school really had a shockingly old-fashioned curriculum. At least, they should have taught us how to use a meat thermometre when roasting beef, or even how to bake bread. Even an omlete. Anyway, I think it the home ec experience seriously scarred me, and scared me away from the kitchen for decades.
But now, I'm turning over a new leaf and trying to enjoy cooking as another means for bringing Italy into my home (thanks, Palma, for the idea of bringing Italy into the home!)
And finally, here's the Cacio e Pepe receipe I've been trying to perfect. It's more basic than Alessandra's delicious-sounding pasta and serves four.
Ingredients: 2 tsp of black peppercorns; one-half pound of spaghetti; and 2.5 ounces of grated pecorino romano, which is supposed to equal about 3/4 of a cup plus 2 tablespoons of pecorino. Apparently, Parmiagiano-Reggiano is also acceptable.
Toast the peppercorns in a small, dry skillet over moderately high heat, until they begin to jump and become fragrant; about 2-3 minutes, the recipe says. I'm finding it takes a bit longer. Crush them coarsely, possibly with the bottom of a big skillet.
Cook the pasta until al dente. Apparently, spaghetti really is the best for this, because it has the right shape for the cheese and pepper to adhere to!
Meanwhile, fill a large glass or ceramic serving bowl with hot water to warm the bowl. Just before the pasta is finished, toss out the water but don't dry the bowl.
Reserve about a half-cup of the pasta water, then drain the pasta in a colander but don't shake off excess water; leave it damp and throw it into the warmed serving bowl. Sprinkle the 3/4 cup of pecorino cheese, and about 3 tablespoons of the pasta water over the pasta and toss quickly. If the pasta still seems dry, use the rest of the reserved pasta water.
Divide the pasta among four plates and then sprinkle with the pepper, as well the final 2 tablespoons of pecorino cheese. Serve immediately, with some extra cheese on the side.
So, I'll be trying this again Saturday night, and hopefully my frozen pecorino will still do the job.
Cacio e pepe with parmigiano wouldn't taste right. The reason cacio e pepe is so good is that the bite of the pecorino and the pepper combine so well. Parmigiano is too 'rich' and nutty and not tangy/sharp/salty enough.
Fittingly enough, Cacio e Pepe in NYC makes a really nice one - incredibly sharp and biting.
----------------------------------- Pekorino, my food blog On The Road, Again [travel stories from 2005-2006]
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