Rachel Roddy’s recipe for cacio e pepe, the old-fashioned way

A network of caves and tunnels was burrowed into Monte Testaccio, an ancient rubbish‑dump hill made entirely of broken amphorae. Today those spaces house nightclubs, mechanics, restaurants, a theatre, a wholesale butcher and an Apostolic church; some reveal the cross sections of pots, others have smoothed the curves with plaster.

A few caves still function as natural warehouses, offering steady low temperatures and good humidity, and Vincenzo Mancini, whose project DOL distributes artisanal products from small agricultural realities in Lazio, has reclaimed a deep cave behind door 93 as an urban ageing space for cheese and cured meat.

I visited some months ago with the chefs from Trullo to taste cheese and to eat an unexpected cacio e pepe. Cacio is the older word for cheese, from Latin caseus and perhaps cohaesus (cohesive), while formaggio comes from medieval Latin formaticum and the Greek φόρμος, the wicker mould used to drain curds.

rachel roddy, cacio, pepe, monte testaccio, vincenzo mancini, dol, lazio, cheese ageing, cured meat, trullo