Three things make this Mediterranean recipe: olive oil, pasta and much more time than dishing up the industrial breakfast cereal of your choice.
Get a 2ℓ saucepan of lightly salted water on the boil. Read the instructions on the packet and follow them without deviation or any attempt at novel thought.
Finely chop the parsley and detach the zest from the orange. Newborn zesters please take note: the zest is just the thin outer layer of the peel, not the entire peel. Mix the parsley and the zest, and reserve them in a bowl.
This is a good moment to go all traditional and commission your cast-iron frying pan. Pour in the olive oil and bring this up to medium heat. Remove the forcemeat from the boerewors and donate the skins to the dog.
Add this to the hot oil in the frying pan and break it up with a fork, reducing it to the texture of mincemeat. Add the spring onions, finely chopped, and stir it all until the boerewors is browned.
Pour the cooked pasta through a colander and save a cup or so of the pasta water. Add the pasta to the meat and onions in the frying pan, and stir the contents well.
Grate the cheese and mix it with the eggs. This meal works particularly well with pecorino cheese. A tough local Cheddar makes a good alternative if the Italian stuff is hair-raisingly expensive.
Remove the frying pan from the heat and pour in the raw egg and cheese mixture. The residual heat should allow the eggs to cook in the mix. Remember the cup of used pasta water? Sprinkle in a little to moisten the mixture during the final phase.
Serve this on heated plates, season with freshly ground black pepper and garnish with the zest and parsley mixture.
This meal cries out for good coffee. Select dark to medium roast Ethiopian beans, grind them and use a mokka pot or plunger to complete the extraction. Somewhere between a large drop and a small dash of milk produces the best possible result.
David Basckin is a freelance journalist and videographer.
