It’s all about being simple

April 24, 2008 webmaster No comments

Location: My tiny kitchen

This pasta recipe has the one thing that I believe in making excellent pastas – simplicity. There are only 3 key ingredients – eggs, parmigiano reggiano and black truffles. Since I’m not exactly ready to spend my life-time saving on a pasta dish, I use black truffle sauce instead. The sauce gave a luxurious richness to the dish.

This recipe serves 3 people. You will need:
- 3 eggs
- 2/3 cup of black truffle sauce
- 6 teaspoons of truffle oil
- Spaghetti enough for 3 people
- 2/3 cup of walnuts
- 1 cup of grated parmigiano reggiano cheese
- freshly ground pepper, coarse salt and olive oil

- In a quart pan, bring water to a boil.
- Put in the spaghetti.
- Put in a good amount of salt. I put in 4 heaping tablespoons of coarse salt.
- I can never tell when pastas are done without doing the doneness test – I take a strand of pasta and bite it.
- When the pastas are done, drain them and put them into a bowl.
- Save one cup of pasta water for later use.

- In another quart pan, bring water to a boil.
- Put a small sieve into the boiling water.
- Crack one egg and gently slide it into the sieve.
- Reduce the heat to medium and shimmer for 4 minutes.
- Take the egg out of the shimmering water. Using a spoon, carefully lift the egg out of the sieve.
- Put the egg into a bowl of cold water, doing so will stop the egg from cooking further.
- Repeat with the remaining 2 eggs.

While waiting for the eggs and pasta to cook, prepare the walnuts.
- In a non stick pan, put in the walnuts.
- Over medium to low heat, toast the walnuts for 4 to 5 minutes, or until you see the walnuts start to turn dark.

Chop the walnuts until they are the size of coarse salt. The chopped walnuts will add a good texture to the sauce.

Grate the cheese. I love tasting the cheese in my pasta and therefore I always grate my cheese very coarse.

- In a quart pan, put in 4 tablespoons of olive oil.
- When the pan is hot, put in the pasta.
- Put in the chopped walnuts.
- Pour in the truffle sauce.
- Put in freshly ground pepper.

- Quickly stir the pasta with the truffle sauce and walnuts until the pasta is nicely coated with the sauce.
- Slowly, put in the pasta water that was saved earlier.
- Putting in the pasta water is tricky because if too much water was added, then the pasta will taste bland. Add in just enough water so that you can see a little amount of sauce in the bottom of the pan. I used 2/3 cup of water.

To assemble:
- Put the pasta on the plate.
- Carefully put the poached egg on the pasta.
- Sprinkle a generous amount of cheese.
- Put a dash of cayenne pepper on the egg.
- Finally, drizzle in 2 tablespoons of truffle oil all over the dish.

Just before eating, break the yolk and let it sipped into the sauce. I love mixing the yolk into the pasta as the yolk adds another level of richness to the pasta.

The yolk gives the richness, while the truffle sauce and truffle oil give a persistent aroma to the dish. The result would have been better if the pasta was fresh.