In Italian, that means “cheese and pepper.” And if you ask me, that’s a marriage made in heaven. This is one of, if not the most, simple pasta recipes you can make. How satisfying is it to only need five ingredients and a hot half-hour to put this decadent dish on your table (and more importantly, in your belly)?! I’ve never met a cacio e pepe I didn’t like. Spaghetti’s a classic and just fun to twirl around your fork, but you can use any other long-shaped pasta. If linguine’s your thing, go for the linguine. Then smother it in butter?! Even if you stopped there, you’ve got a tasty treat on your plate. (Hence why half the kids in America live on this stuff). But the real stars of this dish are the cheese and pepper. Toasting the pepper in the butter enhances its flavor. And the freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano coupled with the freshly grated pecorino Romano is like dying and going to cheese heaven. I could eat this pasta every week. I don’t, only because then I’d start to look like a cacio e pepe, but boy would I like to. I have one word for this dish, and that’s deliziosa (”delicious” in Italian)!