IT seemed so unlikely. Three ingredients: spaghetti, pecorino cheese and black pepper. That and a little of the salted water the pasta was cooked in. Toss them together, and you'd have a great dish.
How could it possibly amount to anything? But it did, and it was as good as promised. The dish was spaghetti cacio e pepe, the recipe from Lidia Matticchio Bastianich's new book, "Lidia's Italy."
The concept of Bastianich's fifth book, a companion to her PBS series of the same name (the show debuted this month), is enormously appealing; the subtitle says it best: "140 Simple and Delicious Recipes From the Ten Places in Italy Lidia Loves Most."
Bastianich, owner of six restaurants, including Felidia and three others in New York, starts in her native Istria (now part of Croatia), then leads us through the dishes of Trieste, Friuli, Padova/Treviso, Piemonte, Maremma, Rome, Naples, Sicily and Puglia.
The dishes aren't just the usual suspects, perhaps because of the geographic spread; many recipes are quite unusual and alluring. From Naples, Bastianich offers tiella, a pizza stuffed with octopus or escarole and olives. From Trieste, sardines in onion-wine marinade. From Maremma, sage pudding.
The spaghetti recipe is from the Rome chapter. It calls for an unholy amount of pepper -- two tablespoons of whole black peppercorns for one pound of pasta -- and a cup and a half of freshly grated pecorino Romano. "But because it is such a minimalist creation," Bastianich writes in the headnote, "every ingredient is of utmost importance." I used Rustichella d'Abruzzo spaghetti and pecorino from Lazio; I ground Tellicherry peppercorns coarsely using a mortar and pestle.
The technique is very natural; it feels like the way we all should have been taught to cook, and that's true of just about everything I cooked from the book. You have your crushed pepper and grated cheese ready to go, along with a heated serving bowl, as the spaghetti cooks. When the pasta reaches al dente, you pull it out with tongs, let it drain over the pot for an instant, then plop it into the bowl, still dripping. "Immediately scatter a cup of the grated cheese," Bastianich instructs, "and most of the ground pepper on the pasta, and toss in quickly. As you mix, sprinkle over spoonfuls of hot water from the cooking pot to moisten and amalgamate the pasta and condiments -- add more pepper or cheese to taste."
