Ever wonder how to make creamy pasta sauce like you find in cacio e pepe and other Italian favorites? Different chefs have different techniques, and in this new series, we'll reach out to experts for their take and hopefully learn something new in the process! First up, a Hollywood private chef from Rome, Italy, who has cooked on-set for major productions including Game of Thrones.
Every so often you encounter a chef who simply exudes light from their being in ways that make it impossible not to smile when you’re around them. Barbara Pollastrini is one of those people. But under the warm exterior, high-pitched laughter, and avant-garde style, is a chef who is filled to the brim with passion, competitiveness, and a drive to achieve that few chefs seem to possess.
Barbara Pollastrini
“I grew up in Italy near Roma watching my mom cook and seeing how she would pick the best ingredients in the world,” says Pollastrini.
While in Rome, her mother got sick and for some reason had a strange hankering for French food. This led Pollastrini to study at Le Cordon Bleu so she could bring her mother French food every single day. After studying at the school and becoming a teacher, Pollastrini followed her first major passion for cooking to Los Angeles. She wanted to work on movie sets as a chef, and it wasn’t long that she was cooking for major productions like The Hunger Games, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and the TV show Luck with Dustin Hoffman.
With every project Pollastrini works on, she seems to inject her personality, slowly bending the will of those around her to see things her way. “I’m like extra virgin olive oil. I slowly seep into everything,” Pollastrini says.
That’s why we wanted to chat with Pollastrini about cooking techniques such as how to make creamy pasta sauce. She’s a master when it comes to making delectable dishes, and her plating is some of the most stunning you’ll ever see.
What’s a technique that you’re currently using and something that home chefs can incorporate into their own repertoires.
One of the techniques that I’m using a lot right now is called pasta risottata. It’s when you cook the pasta in a small amount of water in a similar style to risotto.
What is it about this technique that you like so much?
It’s because I can create this creamy consistency without using a lot of butter.
For chefs at home, can you walk us through that process from start to finish?
For example, I use this technique when I’m making cacio e pepe. You start boiling salty water and then you add dry pasta to a frying pan. You add some of the water to the pasta in the frying pan, with the heat on the pan, and you wait until the water is fully absorbed before adding more water like you would with a risotto.
Cacio e Pepe. Credit: Barbara Pollastrini
Are you stirring the whole time as you do with risotto?
No, you don’t have to. What you want is the starch of the pasta coming out. That’s all you want. That’s the basis of this technique. Because when you boil pasta in a big pot, the starch gets diluted. But when you cook the cacio e pepe in the frying pan, you have all the starch in the pan with the pasta and it’s impossible for the cacio e pepe not to be creamy.
When you’re starting, for say two people, how much pasta and how much water are you using?
For two people, you want to use 200 grams of pasta. It’s usually 100 grams per person. And you put all the spaghetti into a frying pan and then fill it with one cup of boiling water. Just enough to cover the spaghetti. Once the spaghetti absorbs the water, you can put two more cups of water into the pan and then cover the pan with a lid.
And why do you cover the pasta with a lid at that point?
Because after it absorbs the first bit of water, you still need to cook the pasta in the boiling water. You need to check how long it takes to cook, but probably five more minutes at this point.
Okay, so once the pasta is cooked al dente, and the water is mostly dissolved, how much water do you want there to be left in the pan?
Probably three tablespoons of water at most. And at this point, you take the pan off the heat and you start to add the Pecorino Romano.
When you take the lid off the pan, do you let the pasta cool a bit before you add the Pecorino? And how do you know it’s the right temperature so the cheese doesn’t get clumpy or stringy?
You let it cool a little bit. Basically, when the water that’s still in the pan is no longer bubbling and you don’t see a lot of steam coming off the pasta, it’s time to add the Pecorino. And if you’re in a hurry, you can add a little bit of cold water just to get the right temperature.
Why is this technique so good for making things creamier?
When you cook any kind of pasta, you know that you need to add some pasta water from the pot at the end. That always makes it creamier because the starch has this amazing way to make everything creamy and bring the sauce together so it's not going to be watery. The starch makes everything creamy, and the sauce is going to be gripped by the pasta and not just slide off. It’s incredible.
Can you use this technique for other types of pasta dishes?
Oh yes. For pasta vongole, spaghetti with clams. First, I cook the vongole. And you know when they cook they release a lot of water. Then I add some wine and take the vongole out of the pan. Then in that water with the wine, I add the spaghetti. That’s when I start doing the same technique so the spaghetti absorbs all the juice from the vongole and the wine, and they get this amazing taste. When people add the pasta at the end, it doesn’t have that much flavor because it’s not soaking up the wine and the clam juice. It’s so good for this dish and it’s something that very few people do.