Spaghetti with Frisée and Fried Egg

Rather than just having a bowl of spaghetti and sauce for dinner, why not spruce it up and take the noodles for a spin in a different direction? That's what we did with this Spaghetti with Frisée and Fried Egg we prepared this evening.

As we dropped the pasta, our knife went to work slashing a few strips of bacon into pieces, then tossing them in a skillet to start rendering out. As we used a good amount of bacon, it produced plenty of drippings as they cooked - halfway through, we took the time to drain away most of the excess fat and reserved it for later use. Why let it go to waste? Wicked and probably a little naughty for sure, but you'll see in a minute what we did with that crazy liquid. Besides, we did our good deed by using healthy whole-wheat pasta, right? Hee hee!

After taking the now-crispy bits of salty bacon out of the skillet, we quickly followed up with a hefty amount of chopped, slightly bitter greens, frisée to be exact. Just as it began to wilt, we shocked it with a shot of sherry vinegar to envelop the greens with a sharp note. Scooped into a bowl with the drained pasta and a scoop of the starchy water it cooked in, we used the same skillet for the third time (hurray for less dishes!) to work on the last touch for this dish.

Pouring in enough of the reserved crazy liquid, aka bacon fat, to cover the skillet and heat back up, we then cracked in a couple eggs to fry. Sizzle the eggs to your liking, but for us, I let them cook until the whites had just set, the edges were ever-so-crispy and lightly golden, yet the yolks retained a silky softness that when pierced with a fork, let loose a golden flow of decadence. Twirling the noddles, strewn with the tender greens, into a nest on the plate, scattering the top with bacon and sliding the fried egg on top, one would think we'd be set to eat, yes? Not so... since we'd already started down a slippery slope with all that bacon, we figured we might as well throw caution to the wind and top off the plate with freshly grated shreds from a quality block of Parmesan cheese.

On the plate in just about 20 minutes, this is one of those simple, yet satisfying dishes I will definitely keep handy for those nights when we have a house showing or errands that keep me out of the kitchen. Maybe not as often as both of us would like, but it won't be long before this graces our table again!

Recipes
Spaghetti with Frisée and Fried Egg