Food: Meatless Monday – Fried Egg Pasta

This is one of those great, rich-tasting meals that only takes ten minutes and five (very basic, pantry-staple) ingredients. If you don’t have fresh garlic, you can substitute jarred, or use a pinch of garlic powder. If you don’t have parmesan cheese, you can substitute romano, or go without. If you don’t have spaghetti, you can use any long pasta, or even short noodles. If you don’t have eggs…you can order pizza.

infusing the oil with garlic

However, while Fried Egg pasta is easy, it does require good timing. You must start the garlic in the oil as soon as you put your pasta in, you must take your pasta out in 7-8 minutes, and you must put the eggs in the oil immediately after your pasta is drained so the noodles will be hot enough to finish cooking your egg when you mix it in. The egg yolk must not harden- the yolk is basically your sauce. And you must not put the drained pasta back onto a hot burner for the last steps- otherwise you will scramble your eggs. When cooking the eggs you don’t need to flip them or do anything fancy, just crack and leave them cooking in the oil for 1 minute, then put them in your pasta and stir them up.

fried egg, almost done

Fried Egg Pasta – serves 2
1/2 lb spaghetti noodles
4 tbsp olive oil* (at least)
2 eggs
3/4 cup grated parmesan cheese (at least)
2 cloves garlic, smashed
salt and pepper
Optional additions: chopped parsley, fresh lemon juice

Boil pasta water, add pasta. Immediately start cooking your “sauce”: In a medium saucepan (non stick is probably best here), cook garlic in oil over medium-low heat, making sure not to burn it. Remove garlic from pan, discard – leave oil in the pan, over medium heat. At this point your pasta should be done- drain it quickly and return to pot – but OFF the heat.  Add eggs to oil and cook carefully until whites are just solidified – about 1 minute. Quickly stir eggs and oil into the pasta, breaking up the yolks and white. Add cheese, salt, and pepper to taste. Add parsley or lemon juice if desired.Voila!

*Since this is one of those dishes where you are really going to taste the olive oil, I recommend using a good quality oil. But as with all ingredients in this dish, you can substitute generic with little to no consequences.

stir it all up and enjoy!