Breakfast Pasta to Make at Your House
An easy-to-make and really delicious morning repast
Here’s a delicious morning meal that I tried out a few months ago—super tasty and under 10 minutes to make! When I first had the thought, I doubted myself and dismissed it for a few days as odd. But, the more I thought about it … well, if you like toast and jam, this is really just another (terrific) way to eat it! The doubts went by the wayside, and I ended up with a wonderful, quick morning meal!
I started with some leftover cooked, but not dressed, maccheroni. It was the Mancini maccheroni, the super fine farmstead pasta we sell at the Deli and use enormous amounts of at the Roadhouse for mac and cheese. It’s the only farmstead pasta made in Italy—the Mancini family, in the Marche region on Italy’s east coast, grows only heirloom wheat varieties and then makes the milled grain into pasta on the farm. They use all traditional techniques, including the old bronze-die extrusion—the bronze makes for the appropriately rough, sandpaper-like surface that old-school pasta is supposed to have. (Modern pastas are extruded through Teflon, which is cheaper and faster but makes the pasta super-slick, so your sauce inevitably ends up at the bottom of the bowl.) Mancini dries the maccheroni at the appropriately very low temperatures to protect the integrity, texture, and flavor of the grain for over 50 hours (instead of 5–6 hours at high temperature as is done in commercial pasta plants).
One of the best parts of artisan pasta is that when it’s leftover, it still tastes terrific. (By contrast, leftover industrially made pasta will have next to no flavor at all.) You can, of course, cook the pasta from scratch the morning of—it will be wonderful! Just start the rest of this after you have hot, drained pasta! The Mancini pasta worked wonderfully well, but all of the artisan pasta we stock—Rustichella, Gentile, etc.—would be great too!
For the breakfast pasta, I took the leftover maccheroni from the fridge, and taking the easy way out (it was morning!), sprinkled it with a small bit of water, and popped it in the microwave for maybe a minute at most, just enough to get it hot. When it came out, I tossed it with a bit of extra virgin olive oil, and then some great jam—given everything I’ve been writing, you won’t be shocked to know that I used the American Spoon apricot preserves! So delicious! Really, though, any high-quality jam you love will work well—try it with that terrific Mara des Bois strawberry preserves I wrote about last month from our friends at Agrimontana in the Piemonte region of Italy. Add a little sea salt to taste, and then add a small bit of freshly ground coarse black pepper.
If you’re going minimalist, you’re good to go just like that. If you want to take it up a notch, you can do as I did one time and add slivers of sautéed fresh fruit (I had some fresh apricots on the counter). And/or a spoonful of fresh ricotta! And/or some toasted nuts! And, although it sounds crazy, it’s delicious with Grape-Nuts sprinkled over top, which is a great way to approximate the use of toasted breadcrumbs atop so many Italian pasta dishes.
All in all, it’s lovely, slightly sweet, slightly savory, super tasty, and easy to make. And if you’re having company, you’ll both catch people’s attention and please their palates at the same time!
