A Roman Brunch Recipe: Cacio e Pepe Slow Scrambled Eggs
Issue #7
I’m titling today’s newsletter “A Roman Brunch Recipe,” but to be clear a Roman brunch is an oxymoron. Brunch isn’t really a thing in Rome—at least, not the way it is in New York and other American cities, where seemingly every restaurant has a special brunch menu that spotlights eggs, pancakes, French toast, and the like. Yes, there are some places here that serve brunch (mostly hotels), but for the most part they’re catering to an international clientele. Traditional Roman trattorias and restaurants don’t serve brunch.
I’m not entirely sure why this is, but it does seem to indicate that Rome is still more traditional than trendy. Traditionally, Italians prefer a sweet rather than savory breakfast (cappuccino and cornetto rather than eggs and bacon) and the big weekend meal in Italian households is Sunday lunch. In her book, How to Be Italian, my friend and veritable Italy expert Maria Pasquale writes with nostalgic reverence about how on weekends her mother would put on a pot to make sugo, “and it would boil for hours as its aroma filled the house.”
Curious about whether Italians today still have a big family-centric Sunday lunch and what they think about brunch, I polled a few friends (both Italians and foreigners living in Italy) and got mixed feedback. Only a couple of people told me that they still have a traditional Sunday lunch on a regular basis—it is a lot of work, after all. A few said their families do a big Sunday lunch on occasion. And a few people told me they prefer brunch, either at home or at a restaurant like Marigold (one of the few restaurants in Rome that offers a proper brunch) or a hotel like Soho House.
Elizabeth Heath, the executive editor of Italy Magazine, told me that her mother-in-law still cooks “the sacred Sunday lunch,” which consists of a pasta, meat, side dish, and sometimes dessert, even though attendance has dwindled down to just her, her husband, daughter, and mother-in-law, but suspects “it might be different in the cities.” (She lives in a small town in Umbria, less than a kilometer from her mother-in-law.) Most of the Romans I asked still prefer Sunday lunch to brunch, even if they’re quieter, more intimate affairs than they used to be, so I suppose it makes sense that there’s not a proliferation of brunch menus in the Eternal City. Even in Milan—a far trendier city than Rome—restaurants that offer a truly good brunch are few and far between, according to Jaclyn DeGiorgio, a fellow freelance journalist who also writes the blog/newsletter A Signorina in Milan.
Personally, while I understand the romance of a big Sunday lunch—and would welcome an invitation to one—it’s not how I live here. My husband Marco’s family doesn’t get together for meals except on birthdays and holidays and depending on his shift, he may or may not be home for lunch on the weekends. And though I have adopted many Italian ways of doing things, I can’t help but stubbornly cling to a more American style of brunch, at least when I’m planning the menu. Maybe it’s my own childhood nostalgia for leisurely weekends when my mom would make popovers or waffles and my dad would make omelets loaded with veggies and cheese, but to me it just doesn’t feel like the weekend if I’m not eating eggs. So here’s my recipe for a brunch dish inspired by the Roman classic pasta cacio e pepe.
Cacio e Pepe Slow Scrambled Eggs
Serves 1
Ingredients:
2 eggs
20-30 grams (about 1 oz) pecorino romano
Freshly cracked black pepper
1 pat butter
1 piece pizza bianca or focaccia (optional)
Directions:
I start by making the cacio e pepe sauce the same way we make it when we’re making pasta. The key here is using good pecorino romano, a hard sheep’s milk cheese, which, according to the Consortium for the Protection of Pecorino Romano Cheese (because of course that’s a thing here), must be aged for at least eight months. It’s also worth noting that it’s always better to buy a big hunk of cheese and grate it as needed because when cheese is pre-grated and stored in the fridge, it loses its flavor. So cut off a piece of pecorino romano and grate it into a small bowl. Crack a whole bunch of fresh black pepper into the bowl and whisk it together. Use more pepper than you might think you need—you should be able to clearly see the pepper in the mixture. Then heat a small amount of water on the stove and pour a little bit at a time into the cheese and pepper mixture, whisking to create a creamy sauce.
Next, beat the eggs in a separate bowl and add the cheese and pepper sauce to the bowl, whisking to combine. Normally, I add a pinch of salt to the beaten eggs, but in this case there’s no need because pecorino romano is a very salty cheese. Heat a pat of butter in a pan, keeping the flame on the lowest setting. Pour the eggs into the pan and stir them around constantly. The key to getting creamy scrambled eggs is cooking them low and slow over a very low flame.
The recipe is so simple it almost seems ridiculous to write it out, but there you have it. I’ve also made this recipe by simply adding the pecorino and pepper directly to the beaten eggs, without making the sauce separately, but I think it works better if you take the extra couple of minutes to do so. Serve it atop a piece of focaccia or toast if you like.
Further Reading
This recipe is inspired by something I ate years ago at Maialino in New York City, which just reopened in a new location. I interviewed Danny Meyer, the renowned restaurateur behind it, for this as-told-to style piece about his deep connection to Rome and how it shaped his vision of hospitality.
I’m also obsessed with Maialino’s recipe for olive oil cake, which is incredibly easy to make at home and is a nice (sweet) foil to these scrambled eggs.
Want some more insight into how Italians actually eat? Check out my list of 11 Food and Drink Rules Italians Live By for Food & Wine.