Cacio e Pepe Scones

Cacio e Pepe scones are my contribution to Food’n Flix this month. Food’n Flix is a fun blogging opportunity to watch the same movie as other amazing food bloggers and be inspired. This month’s movie, Burnt, was hosted by Caroline Makes. Burnt is an absolutely quintessential cooking movie about a burned out chef who makes a major come back and finds love and inspiration along the way.

The first time I watched Burnt was on an airplane on my I-Pad on the way to Indianapolis a few weeks ago. I thought that creating food inspired from this movie would be easy - it’s a movie about a chef and about food, after all, so how hard could it be? After watching the movie through the first time, I realized it was going to be more challenging than I’d originally thought. There are so many fast paced camera shots of all the food that the main character Adam, played by Bradley Cooper, plates, serves, and eats that I couldn’t quite figure out what was actually being cooked. Then I was distracted by the plot line and found myself more engaged with the drama between the characters than the food. So I watched the movie a second time this past week while I was in Chicago, pen and notebook in hand. It provided a great distraction from all the real-world drama that was going on with the US election. So much beautiful food: seared shrimp, bouillabaisse, summer vegetables on ricotta cheese, turbot, beets, oysters, omelettes, mushrooms, beef, lamb. But my favorite food moment in the film is at the very start when Adam suggests adding chopped sage to a luscious looking bowl of cacio e pepe (cheese and pepper pasta). I got to thinking about the combination of cheese and black pepper and then even more about food and how it can bring such comfort - whether one is taking care of a chef who has gone on a binge by cooking a simple omelette or if one is just trying to recover from the election hangover. I love cheese and black pepper and I love scones, so decided to see what would happen if I combined these elements.

I have to say that I’m very pleased with how these scones turned out. I even went digging through the pantry to find a jar of tomato jam I made last year to see how it would taste on a scone (it’s delicious). These are so creamy they are nearly biscuit like, so I’m pretty sure we are going to make some sausage gravy next weekend and warm up a few scones in lieu of biscuits. I also think these would be great with a glass of a robust red wine as a holiday appetizer.

Cacio e Pepe Scones
Makes 12 scones

2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons ground black pepper
1/2 cup butter
1 cup shredded Parmesan cheese, Pecorino Romano or similar
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 egg

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt and black pepper. Cut the butter into slices. Add the butter into the dry mixture and either use a pastry cutter or your hands to incorporate the butter until it forms pea size chunks. Add the cheese and mix it in. Add the heavy cream and egg gently incorporating until all the flour/butter mixture is wet and sticks together in a shaggy dough.

Turn the dough out onto a parchment lined baking sheet and form into a circle. Cut the dough into twelve pieces that radiate out from the middle of the circle. Gently separate each piece – you want just a bit of space between each scone so that they can rise.

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the tops of the scones are golden brown. Enjoy!