Hump-Day Quickie: Eggy Spaghetti

Today, we at A Book of Cookrye are revisiting recipes we received from friends!

Eggy Spaghetti 1 serving's worth of spaghetti (whole-wheat spaghetti is particularly good) 1 or 2 eggs 1 or 2 slices of cheese (optional) Seasonings to taste Boil the spaghetti in salted water, cooking it perhaps a bit firmer than you normally would. Immediately after you drain it, return it to the pot and break the egg(s) over it, adding the seasonings of choice and also the cheese if desired. Quickly stir it all very hard. The heat in the noodles should cook the egg and melt the cheese as you stir. It doesn't always work, so if the egg doesn't cook just put it back on the stove over low heat. Stir them well, being sure to scrape the bottom of the pot until the eggs are cooked. You can add salt to the eggs before pouring them on the hot spaghetti if you like, but we find that the salt in the noodles is enough already. Source: My friend's cousin

As you can guess just from reading the recipe, this is so easy to adapt to whatever you have in the freezer. Whatever extra vegetables or meat you have would be very nice if you stir them in. Remember when we made magical garlic bread? Some of the extra garlic butter, which we froze because even before the plague hit we do not waste food) is floating in with these eggs.

As you can also see, we've added enough pepper to turn the eggs an unnerving shade of brown. We at A Book of Cookrye have never mastered restraint with a spice shaker. It's one of the ways we test potential love interests-- if they can't eat our garlic bread, it'll never work.

Anyway, remember when we made bacon-and-egg spaghetti as written from a friend's cousin in Italy? This is basically the same thing except we didn't bother finding any bacon. Why? Because in Our Kitchen of Cookrye, bacon is something we only purchase when have plans for it. Eggs, spaghetti, and garlic always have residence in our stores of food.
All right, here's where the magic happens! We dump the eggs onto the steaming-hot spaghetti...

That small amount of garlic butter got hot and stank up the entire downstairs.

And the heat within the noodles flash-cooks the eggs, giving us spaghetti that has cooled to pleasantly warmed and eggs that are perfectly cooked! See for yourself?

All right, so if you want to have a lot of egg instead of barely enough to almost coat the spaghetti, it'll probably have to go back on the stove.

Now, if you like cheese, you can just drop it in the pot when you dump in the eggs.

With a bit of hard stirring over a low burner, the cheese will melt and the eggs will be perfectly beaten. So you don't need to get out a separate little bowl and fork for egg-beating (we at A Book of Cookrye are always looking out for everyone who hates washing dishes).

Although I like to cook it a bit longer so that it actually sticks to the noodles. If you time it just right, it turns into a lovely and creamy approximation of macaroni and cheese. Since spaghetti and sandwich bread are made of nearly the same things, you could say that this is just a slight rearrangement of the ingredients for scrambled eggs with cheese on top and toast on the side.

I don't know when it's customary to eat this in Italy, but I really like it when I've just woken up or in the middle of the night. Seeing as I tend to wake up at night anyway, this is perfect. If you have a bit of extra time in the morning, this is a lovely first thing to eat.