Miso and Furikake Cacio e Pepe

Start by adding our pasta to boiling, salted water, cooking for a couple minutes under the guided amount. In a small pan, toast the peppercorns until nice and fragrant. Remove them from the pan and crush into a coarse powder.

From this take 50ml of pasta water, and mix with the 25ml of cold water. The reasoning here, is that we want the starch from the pasta water to help bind our sauce, but as hot water will melt our cheese, splitting our sauce and making it stringy, we add the cold water to cool down the starchy water a bit. A very small ice cube here will work too! Add the cheeses, followed by our peppercorns and whisk well, until a 'cream' is made. Add the miso and sesame oil and whisk a final time until the miso has completely dissolved.

Using tongs, remove the pasta from its cooking water and allow it to cool for a few seconds before adding to our cacio e pepe cream. This is for the same reason as cooling down our pasta water!

Mix well, and serve with a dusting of furikake, or nori flakes, and a cured egg yolk!

Cured Egg Yolk: place an egg yolk into a small bowl of soy sauce and mirin, and cover with a piece of paper towel to ensure the egg is completely covered in our curing marinade. Cure for at least an hour for a very runny egg.