The best thing I've eaten in 2023? Cacio e Pepe Popcorn
As binge eating for binge watching, you can't beat my popcorn topped like the three-ingredient Roman spaghetti classic with grated Pecorino Romano cheese and cracked black pepper.
When it came to classic pasta sauces repurposed for other applications, I preferred to stay on the sidelines. I regarded, say, pesto gelato or carbonara nachos as I did Turkish oil wrestling: I wouldn’t partake myself, but in the privacy of my own home I liked to look at pictures of it.
With the New Year I resolved to be a participant and not a spectator. Determined to live dangerously, I made a place in my life for cacio e pepe popcorn.
The vision of “cheese and pepper” popcorn came to me in a daydream. I immediately recognised an original and, might I say, brilliant alternative to fetashized popcorn, my clever name for popcorn tossed with crumbed Feta, oregano, lemon zest.
When entertaining at home, my offer of fetashized popcorn used to be good for a snicker. But lately the suggestion of this cocktail snack has grown stale, as had my conversational playlist. At social gatherings around the holidays I found myself recounting the same reflections that were probably past their sell-by date when they first came to my mind in that transitional state of consciousness between lunch and dinner. At a Christmas party attended by A-listers from the London art world, I attempted to impress an important writer and Cambridge Classics alumna with a motto that summed up my vast life’s experience:
“The more you know,” I said, pausing with a certain self-satisfaction, “the more you know you don’t know.”
“You do know Socrates said that?” she asked, insinuating that I didn’t or, worse, that I knowingly tried to pass off the ancient Greek philosopher’s words as my own. With no satisfactory rejoinder coming to mind, I resorted to rhetorical misdirection.
“To quote the great American thinker Garry Trudeau,” I replied, “I’m just a French major from the Bronx.” She had no clue what I was talking about and you probably don’t either. The American comic strip Doonesbury was apparently not on the Cambridge Classics curriculum. Who knew?
No, I didn’t appropriate the popcorn recipe inspired by spaghetti cacio e pepe (“cheese and pepper”), Rome’s classic three-ingredient pasta. No, I wasn’t aware that Cacio e Pepe Popcorn was already a thing online, or that Organic Cacio e Pepe Puffs had made the Trader Joe’s Product Hall of Fame. At times it does seem like the world is passing me by.
Popcorn sprinkled with Pecorino Romano cheese and black pepper in the minimalist manner of a cacio e pepe? Really? How could anyone have imagined such a variation existed? I’m old enough to remember a time when if you ran out of spaghetti you used linguine or bucatini as a substitute, not popcorn kernels.
Were the supermarkets and super influencers promoting macaroni-and-cheese popcorn, that would not have surprised me. If I saw a mac-and-cheese shampoo pop up on my IG feed my only question would be: Which scented conditioner does one pair with it? You wouldn’t match a mac-and-cheese shampoo with a peppermint, tea tree and eucalyptus conditioner, would you?
The recipe you see below is apparently not the very first recipe for cacio e pepe popcorn. Do you care? That one is so 2020 anyhow. This is my original recipe and it’s the best thing you won’t be able to stop eating in January 2023.
CACIO E PEPE POPCORN RECIPE
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/3 cup popcorn kernels
3 tablespoons clarified butter (substitute extra virgin olive oil)
1 cup (about 80 grams) freshly grated Pecorino Romano cheese
1-to-2 teaspoons fresh cracked pepper
Combine extra virgin olive oil and 2 popcorn kernels in a large heavy-bottomed pot, cover and heat over medium heat until the kernels pop.
Add the remaining kernels, give the pot a shake and cover loosely, leaving the lid slightly ajar.
Continue to heat, shaking the pot frequently, until the popping slows to several seconds between pops. Remove from heat, allow 20 seconds for some final pops, and then pour into a large bowl.
Toss the popcorn as you slowly drizzle it with clarified butter. Continue to toss as you sprinkle with Pecorino Romano and cracked black pepper.
Serve immediately, with napkins at the ready.