“It was a scary point, because it’s a recipe that already works,” said Ottolenghi at the time. “How do you change a perfect dish?”
Pasta is a food that makes most people look backward. The best-loved versions are those made in the past, by someone’s grandmother or great aunt. No one likes to see the words “new” and “improved” in front of “mac and cheese”.
It is a brave chef who decides to upgrade a classic pasta. That is where Yotam Ottolenghi comes in. The revered restaurateur and food writer has a singular way of picking up a treasured dish and seeing an opportunity to insert an unlikely flavour or two without disturbing the food’s integrity. In his most recent cookbook, Ottolenghi Flavor, the Israeli-born cook and his test kitchen assistant Ixta Belfrage redefined cacio e pepe by adding a hefty sprinkling of za’atar. The tangy mix of dried herbs and spices, invariably including thyme, oregano, sumac and sesame seeds (recipes vary around the Middle East), is one of the chef’s signature flavourings. The cheesy, buttery pasta instantly became livelier.
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