What’s for Breakfast? The Same thing We Had Last Night!

How difficult are weekend mornings?!

First, I want to sleep in late. But I stay with a living alarm clock who for some reasons cannot sleep beyond 7 am on weekends (yeah I am talking about Little B).

So I often wake up hopeless.

Secondly, why isn’t anybody happy with having cereal on weekend? And when I say ‘anybody,’ yeah I am including myself as well.

Why this expectation that just because it is a weekend, we need to whip up something ‘special’ for breakfast?

So I have come up with a plan! I try making things on the weekend which aren’t really fancy, but sound fancy and look even fancier. For example, scrambled eggs on toast. You get what I mean!

Another staple on my weekend breakfast menu is this particular recipe. I don’t know what should it be called technically, so I call it ‘leftover pasta breakfast.’

Inspiration for this dish comes from Giada De Laurentiis. About 3 years back, I read a recipe similar to this in one of Giada’s book. I have completely forgotten the original recipe, I don’t even know for sure how much like or unlike my recipe is from hers. I just know that now this is the way I do it.

It all starts on Friday night, which is most of the time a pasta night for us. I intentionally cook pasta in excess so I am left with leftovers for sure. I tuck the leftover pasta in my refrigerator and call it a night.

Then on Saturday morning, I just take the leftover pasta, some vegetables and eggs and I am done. What I make lies somewhere between frittata and omelette.

Leftover Pasta Breakfast Recipe

You Will Need 

1.5 cup leftover pasta

1/2 cup chopped vegetables like onion, tomato and olives (basically anything that you think can complement such a dish)

2 eggs

Salt and pepper

Olive oil

(The measurements for pasta and vegetables are totally up to you. If you are a veggie lover, add in more; if not, add in less.)

How to Go About It

Saute vegetables. I prefer mine chunky, so I leave them on stove for 2-3 minutes.

Let the vegetables cool for about 5 minutes.

Leftover pasta

In a bowl, mix in everything – sauteed vegetables, leftover pasta, eggs and salt and pepper to taste. I like just salt and pepper in my dishes. Feel free to personalize your pasta-egg mixture by adding any other seasoning that you like.

You don’t have to whisk eggs before adding them to the bowl. They are going to get mixed here anyway.

Coat a pan with a nice amount of olive oil. Put the pan on medium high heat and let it get a little hot.

Pour pasta-egg mixture on the pan. Using a spatula, just press down the entire mixture so that it just comes together as one single unit.

Cook for about 5 minutes and then flip it over. I am a bad flipper, so I flip half or one-third of pasta-egg mixture at a time.

What you are looking for is a nicely cooked egg mixture with a little crispy surface. Cook on the other side for another 5 minutes.

Breakfast ready.

The beauty of this breakfast is that its basic flavor comes from the leftover pasta you use. If you had pasta with marinara, that is how it is going to taste like; if you had pasta with pesto, that is how it is going to taste like. So you can eat it every Saturday and still it would taste different from the last time you had it (granted that you are using a different pasta every time).

P.S. I have used Nigella Lawson‘s Sicilian Pasta with tomatoes, garlic and almonds here.