I'll Take an Egg with That

The egg looks sort of like a dollop of whipped cream here. That's not far off...

Friends, aren't little children supposed to hate eggs? Aren't they supposed to run and cry "ew, gross!" when confronted with a runny, yellow yolk?

Maybe I need to try the whole pairing-lettuce-with-a-favorite-food thing with eggs instead of strawberries. Sweet Fancy Moses, people! The kiddo loves an egg product--any egg product. Quiche filled with spinach? Check. Omelets full of otherwise forbidden vegetables? Check. Runny poached eggs on pasta? Check.

What? You've never put a poached egg in pasta? Oh, please, please, please run right out and try this! You will not be sorry.

I make a kind of stand-by pasta dish which is a grown-up version of buttered noodles (adapted from Mario Batali's bavette cacio e pepe, a staple at his restaurant Lupa--do not punish yourself by missing his restaurants because you are too cool for school--they rock!) and which I adapt to whatever I have in the house: pasta, pecorino romano, pepper, olive oil, and butter to which I might add toasted breadcrumbs, roasted cauliflower, cavolo nero (God has never made a better tasting green thing!), shrimp, pancetta, olives, capers--you name it, I've added it.

Tonight I was feeling like being healthy, so I used spinach and roasted cauliflower and eased up on the butter. And then at the last minute, I got a decadent impulse, and I poached an egg for each of us. Heaven. As soon as you get your steaming bowl of noodles, you mush up the egg so that the runny yolk oozes out into your pasta and makes a thick, delicious sauce that even butter can't hope to match. It's like carbonara without the public safety warnings.

Is it bad that we ate two hours ago and I am still salivating?