Spaghetti Pie

Adapted from Cacio e Pepe Pasta Pie by Justin Chapel of Food & Wine I urge you to use freshly ground black pepper that you grind before making this. This torte (or cake) was based on Cacio e pepe, an Italian pasta that gets its distinctive flavor from pecorino cheese and lots of black pepper. If you can’t get pecorino, Parmesan and Asiago are different, but probably the closest substitutes. Also different, but delicious, is Vella dry jack cheese, made in California. I used cheeses that were available to me, and suggest if you can’t get Comte use Gruyere, Emmenthal or Jarlsberg as a substitute for it. (A mild cheddar may work as well.) For the softer cheese, I used a Tomme de montagne, a “catch-all” term in France for a mountain cheese that’s often semi-soft. Fontina isn’t available in France very easily, but I know it is elsewhere. Feel free to use Gouda, Vacherin Fribourgeois, or Morbier in its place. You can make this gluten-free by substituting a gluten-free spaghetti, perhaps cooking it even less than al dente, since it tends to be a lot softer than standard pasta. (Other pasta shapes would work as well, too.) If you don’t have a springform pan, you could bake this in a similar sized casserole and serve it sliced directly from the baking dish without unmolding it.