The pasta gets its stunning color from fresh baby arugula, blanched and pureed and mixed right into the dough. I mean, there’s an entire bag of arugula in one 4-serving batch, so it’s basically a salad, right?
Cacio e pepe is a classic Italian recipe, simply prepared with little more than cheese and pepper. It’s the pasta recipe we turn to when we don’t have anything else to cook (or simply don’t feel like cooking it). The trick is in the starchy water, which you reserve from the pasta pot and add to the saucepan with the butter, pepper, pasta and cheese. The starch in the water emulsifies with the cheese into a perfectly creamy sauce.
Now, let me just say it doesn’t always work. Sometimes the cheese likes to clump rather than melt (but the result is still plenty tasty). We’ve found that adding the pasta to the saucepan first, then sprinkling the cheese over top, helps it to melt more evenly. Add a splash or two more of pasta water and keep stirring over low heat until the cheese is melted and the sauce appears cloudy throughout. Another tip? Grate your cheese very finely. Use the fine side of your cheese grater or even a microplane if you have one. This helps the cheese melt quickly and evenly.
The gorgeous homemade spaghetti noodles are naturally colored with fresh arugula. One 4-serving batch contains an entire bag of fresh baby arugula (how’s that for getting your daily dose of leafy greens?) The final pasta, however, doesn’t carry the sharp bitter taste of arugula, just the gorgeous verdant color. You can also use fresh baby spinach here too, it’d work just as well.
We had to improvise a pasta drying rack, propping up some wire cooling racks on their side and draping the pasta over those. It worked well enough, although I actually went and ordered a real pasta drying rack shortly after we made this so we’re ready for next time. Drying the noodles helps them to harden slightly so that when cooked, they’ll be perfectly al dente. Fresh pasta cooked immediately after making will be much softer and without that tell-tale bite that distinguishes a bowl of perfectly cooked pasta.
This recipe can easily be separated into its individual parts: the arugula pasta dough can be made into any shape and cooked into any pasta recipe you choose. (Can you imagine a pesto pasta made using the green noodles? It’d be super green pasta!) Or, if you’re just hankering for something simple for dinner, use a box of dried pasta (I like spaghetti or bucatini) and whip up a batch of classic cacio e pepe in minutes. The cook time for the pasta will be a bit longer (refer to the package instructions and cook it 1-2 minutes less that it says), but the rest of the recipe can be prepared as described below starting with step 11. Total Time: 1 hour
