Good Food Pasta Recepe Sparks Fury in Italy

The Italians reacted with Fury after the popular website of the United Kingdom Good Food has published a recipe for a traditional Roman dish that did not include the correct original ingredients and seemed to depreciate it as a quick meal.

Cacio e Pepe pasta are a beloved Roman dish, known to be simple but surprisingly difficult to do – if the description of good food is something that can be whipped quickly for “a quick lunch” has irritated a lot.

The recipe has also listed four ingredients – spaghetti, black pepper, parmesan and butter and double cream suggested as an option – when there should only be three: spaghetti, black pepper and pecorino cheese.

This was the indignation that an association representing restaurants in Italy approached the issue with the British Embassy in Rome.

One of the Italian food associations said they were “surprised” to see the recipe for such an estimated British food site, which belonged to the BBC until 2024. Its president Claudio Pica said that letters had been sent to the immediate media, the site owner and the British ambassador Edward Llewellyn.

Mr. Pica said: “This emblematic dish, traditionally from Rome and the Lazio region, has been a must for Italian cuisine for years, so much so that it has been reproduced even beyond the borders of Italy.”

He regretted contradicting the British site, but said that “the original Cacio e Pepe recipe excludes parmesan and butter. There are not four ingredients, but three: pasta, pepper and pecorino”.

The fury was widely covered in the Italian media, with a journalist at the Rai public broadcaster by saying: “We are always told, you are not as good as the BBC … And then they will do this. Such a serious mistake. The suggestion to add cream gave me the shawl.”

The Good Food Food Food brand belonged to BBC Studios (the BBC commercial wing) until 2018, when it was sold to immediate Media CO – with the BBC prefix which was abandoned by its name last year.

Although some chiefs can experiment with the dish, the main concern is that the website has misleading readers by presenting its version as the original.

Italians often make fun of foreigners for their interpretation of their recipes, but indignation in this case concerns something deeper: the falsification of tradition.

Maurizio and Loredana have run a hotel in the center of Rome – it’s been in their family for four generations.

“You can do all the variations in the world – but you cannot use the original Italian name for them, said Maurizio.” You can’t say it’s Cacio E Pepe if you put butter, oil and cream. So it becomes something else. “”

He added: “You must give in to Caesar what is Caesar!”

Giorgio Eramo manages a restaurant with fresh pasta near St Peter’s Square – serving Cacio e Pepe and other traditional pasta dishes.

“It’s terrible. It’s not Cacio e Pepe … What a good food published, with butter and parmesan, is called” Pasta Alfredo “. This is another type of pasta,” he said.

On the advice of the pasta of his restaurant, he offers cacio e Pepe with lime – a variation. But he says it’s okay.

“It’s different, it’s for the summer, to make the pasta cooler. But it has no impact on tradition. It is not like cream or butter. Lemon is only a small change.”

Nicola, who runs a sandwiches near the Vatican, took a particular problem with the inclusion of the cream.

“Cacio e Pepe should not be done with cream; the cream is for desserts. For the sky. Whoever uses cream does not know what the kitchen means.”

Italians often get angry when foreigners tinker with their food recipes – a pineapple pizza, cappuccino afternoon or carbonara with cream, for example.

Eleonora, who works in a very frequented coffee in the center of Rome, thinks that it is probably not necessary that the Italians get angry if angry with something like that, but understands why they do it.

“Our tradition is based on food. So, if you touch the only thing we have, around the world … it can make us a little sad.”

Good owners immediate media have been approached for comments.