The secret ingredient(s)

"I can't get it to taste like it did in the restaurant." How many times have you said that when you were trying to copy a dish you had when you were eating out? Eating at restaurants can make you feel like a failure at home, but as Whoopi Goldberg puts it "Let's ANAYLZE this."

In the restaurant, someone cuts the vegetables. Someone makes the sauce. Someone cleans up. Someone cooks the meat or fish. Someone plates everything up so it looks nice. Five people there, and we haven't even gotten started. So, where's your entourage? That'd be YOU. So we start there.

Let's add that restaurant stoves get to temperatures that are illegal in homes, and we've got another level. But there's one more and this is one you CAN work with. Restaurants are cagy about ingredients, and you'll frequently NEVER have anyone tell you that there are two ingredients no restaurant cook could do without.

You ready? I'm almost gonna whisper this to you: water, and salt.

Yup, that's it. If you watched someone in a restaurant kitchen cook your meal, you would say something like "I would NEVER put in that much salt. " Well... someone just did. Remember that most restaurant food is somewhat more complex than you'll make at home, so the saltiness disperses a little. But that's one right there. And the other secret ingredient is , in fact water. Water plays a very important part in soups, sauces, and just about everything else that you get in a restaurant. I'm going to show you its importance in an "exemplar" dish. By exemplar, I mean I'm going to describe it for one kind of cheese, but you can do this for anything.

The dish, is "pasta con cacio e pepe." This is one of the simplest of all Italian pasta dishes, which means it's downright simple indeed. It also means, for better or worse, that it's a "balance beam" dish. By that I mean that you have to walk a very straight, narrow line. You can mess it up very easily if you try to put twists and twirls to it. Don't gussy it up. Make it straight on like this. And pay attention to the water.

Here's what you need. You need pasta. How much? Well, how hungry are you and how many of there are you? Guy and I had this for lunch on Saturday, and we ate half a pound of dry pasta between us as the lunch dish. We could have served four people this as a first course. You'll also need cheese. How much? How much do you like cheese? Again, for us, I used just under a half a pound of "cacio" cheese.

Now, let me explain cacio cheese, which is a bit hard to find, even in NY. Hard cheeses, like pecorino fulvio, or pecorino romano, don't start that way. They start as soft cheeses, which dry out and age. Sort of like me. :). Cacio, as I understand it is the "young adolescent" version of the adult that is pecorino romano (hey, that's not MY purple prose. I copied it from someone else. I'm just trying to make a point, guys). If you don't have cacio available, use some other slightly firm cheese. Or even pecorino. But keep the taste of the cheese in mind. The stronger it tastes , the less you should use (and for heaven's sakes, TASTE it before you start). Grate your cheese on a three sided grater, using the teardrop grater. Put it aside, while you bring a pot of water to a boil.

Have I already written that there's no reason to start with cold water when you're making pasta? Well, if I have, I'm saying it again. There's no reason to start with cold water when you're making pasta. Use hot water, use lots of it, and cover the pot. This will bring it to the boil faster. And when it's there, take off the lid, add a big tablespoon of salt, and add your pasta. You can use fresh, or dried, just keep in mind that fresh is going to cook really really fast.

Next to the pasta pot, have a big, wide skillet ready. A minute or two before the pasta is ready, take out a cup of the water and put half of it in the skillet. Drain the pasta, add it to the skillet and turn on the heat to low. Add the cheese. Watch what happens. The cheese will start to melt into this wonderful goo, but it will be way too "tight" to eat, and not all that attractive. Add the rest of the water. and stir, and watch a wonderful cheese sauce form.

Know what ? You are basically done. All you do now is get some fresh pepper and grate it into the pasta and cheese, and toss it. How much pepper? How much do you like it? It's up to you.

If you had this in a restaurant, they would charge you about 11 dollars a portion, and you'd pay it gladly, because it's that good. You just made at least two portions, and it probably cost you a grand total of about six bucks. And you made it better, because you controlled the sauce. You also controlled the pepper.

See? You CAN do it.

And as I think about this, I'm going to add this dish to the items I teach when I teach cooking. Yes, this will hook them on pasta.

Now as an exemplar, you have the skills for making dozens of pasta dishes. The use of water to loosen a sauce can be used for just about anything that looks too thick and gunky. I weep when I write this, but if you were really in a bind, and all you had was a can of that ghastly cream of mushroom soup that we all used in the sixties, you could turn it into a pasta sauce as well, using this technique.

Just don't tell me you did. Please.