Wolf's eye pasta with florence fennel, portabella mushroom and egg in a butter olive oil sauce!
It has been a while since I have cooked a simple butter olive oil and egg Italian pasta. At some of the northern Italian restaurants that I worked in, the chefs occasionally made pastas like this as a personal employee meal. When I asked how it tasted, one Italian chef replied by saying this with a mouth full of food; "Its cheap!"
Eggs are cheap food. The best restaurants that I have worked in were always run like tight ships. Employees in the kitchen were expected to eat cheap food. An gluttonous employee in a fine dining restaurant can run the food cost up by as much as 5% to 10%! Fine dining food is not cheap.
For the waitstaff, Italian chefs often served pasta with tomato sauce with poached eggs on top. That is also a cheap employee meal. Twenty years ago, I really did not like eggs and tomato sauce, but now I kind of like the combination.
Italian chefs who came from Italy last century all seemed to like eggs, but they hated chicken. For the most part, chicken was strung up whole in the open air Italian markets back then. The heat of the day made the chickens smell very putrid by late morning. Butchering smelly chicken is not a pleasant task. Old school chefs from Italy usually do not put chicken on a menu. Chicken is not really part of traditional Italian cuisine, but eggs are!
In northern Italy, butter is more frequently part of a recipe than it is in southern Italy. Olive oil pasta sauces are common in southern Italian cooking and they are popular in the north too. Italian chefs who come from areas that are close to the French and Swiss borders like to make butter sauces and olive oil butter sauces for pasta. The Italian chef that responded by saying the pasta was cheap, when asked how it tasted, owned a restaurant on the French border. He used butter in many of his recipes that he brought into that northern Italian restaurant.
Butter and olive oil combined with chopped boiled egg does taste nice and gentle with pasta. The hard egg yolk does add body to the butter and olive oil and it makes the sauce cling tightly to the pasta. Four flavors that go well with egg are in this pasta recipe. Florence fennel has a nice light anise flavor. Garlic, mushrooms and parsley classically taste good with eggs.
Marjoram is an herb that is used in some Italian recipes and many French recipes. Marjoram adds an aromatic garden fresh herb flower flavor with mint and light oregano overtones.
Uova:
2 boiled eggs are needed for this recipe!
I know this is redundant for many readers, but cooking a hard boiled egg should be done a certain way. The yolk should show no signs of gray color around the edges.
Eggs that are boiled for more than 14 minutes will usually have gray edges on the yolk from the reaction of the sulfur in the yolk.
The yolk should be fully cooked for a recipe like this and a good boiling time is 10 to 12 minutes. The boiling time clock starts at the first sign of the water boiling. Always boil eggs in salted water!
For garnishing fine dining food, the center of the yolk should be partially raw or under cooked. For a fine dining garnishing egg, the boiling time is 8 to 9 minutes.
Mezzi Occhi di Lupo a Finocchio Portabella e Uova:
Cook 1 portion of mezzi occhi di lupo pasta in boiling water, till it becomes al dente. The sauce can be made while the pasta cooks!
Heat a saute pan over medium/medium low heat.
Add 1 tablespoon of olive oil.
Add 1 clove of chopped garlic.
Add 2 teaspoons of minced shallot.
Add 1 tablespoon of minced onion.
Add 1/3 cup of small chopped florence fennel bulb and stalks. (anise bulb)
Add 2 small portabella mushrooms that are cut into thin wedges.
Add
Saute till the onions turn clear in color and till the florence fennel starts to become tender.
Add 1/4 cup of water.
Add 1 teaspoon of lemon juice.
Add sea salt and black pepper.
Add 1 pinch of marjoram.
Add the chopped white part of 1 green onion.
Toss the ingredients together and saute till the liquid evaporates.
Note: Remove the pan from the heat at this time, if the pasta is not finished cooking! Start finishing the sauce, when the pasta is almost al dente. If the sauce starts looking dry, add 1 or 2 tablespoons of water.
Place the sauce in the saute pan over medium low heat.
Add 1/2 tablespoon of chopped fennel top green leaves.
Add 3 pats of unsalted butter.
Add 1/2 tablespoon of virgin olive oil.
Add 3 pinches of minced Italian parsley.
Add 1 1/2 finely chopped hard boiled eggs. (Save 1/2 of an egg for a garnish!)
Stir the butter olive oil sauce, as the butter melts, so it partially emuslifies.
Redice the temperature to very low heat.
Drain the water off of the al dente cooked pasta.
Add the pasta to the sauce.
Toss the ingredients together.
Mound the pasta on a plate.
Garnish with 1/2 of a boiled egg and a sprig of Italian parsley.
Serve with finely grated parmesan cheese on the side.
This pasta is not quite as easy to make as it looks! A cook really has to stay on top of this pasta, to make sure that the ingredients do not brown or become dry. This is a nice pasta for those who have a craving for gentle flavors. Yum! Ciao Baby! ... Shawna
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