Easy Cooking for the Easily Distracted: Pasta with Onion, Egg, and Sour Cream

Maybe this sounds vile to you, but bear with me. I didn’t serve this to my family (though maybe I should); this is a meal I made for myself on a night when I was alone in the house and I didn’t have to worry about making anyone but myself happy.

I was, I should add, also making chocolate honey cakes at the same time I made this meal; part of why I did what I did was that it allowed me to be cooking dinner at the same time I did other things — other much messier, more attention-demanding things. Baking chocolate honey cakes is all well and good but it takes energy. Making pasta with onion, egg, and sour cream takes (I learned) very very little energy, though it does require time.

This meal was going to be just pasta with onions and sour cream, but then I mistakenly cracked open four eggs when I only needed two for the cake; so I incorporated the other two eggs in the pasta dish. No one suffered as a result, I can assure you.

In a small heavy pot heat up a couple tablespoons of olive oil (not extra-virgin) and a tablespoon of butter. Thinly slice two large onions and a couple of fat cloves of garlic and bung them into the pot; let them cook for a really long time. Like, an hour and a half even, Stir occasionally. Grind in some pepper. The onions let off a lot of liquid; let them just simmer in their juices, with the heat on pretty low, but not all-the-way low.

In a small bowl, whisk together two eggs (I had jumbo eggs on hand, so that’s what I used) and a couple tablespoons of sour cream. Grate in maybe 1/4 cup of Parmesan cheese.

Cook fettuccine (or other long skinny pasta) in boiling water; drain; dump egg mixture and onion mixture on top and toss and toss and toss.

The resulting dish is delicious, but very dull looking. I make no apologies. It would be a nice side to serve with some red meat and a bright green vegetable. But I ate it all by itself (and all by myself) for dinner tonight. And I will do it again some day, I am sure.