I woke up this morning having dreamed a recipe, and it turned out pretty good. Basted eggs over a bed of fettuccine with pesto and fresh basil. Ready?

• 1 or 2 eggs.
• Fresh (refrigerator-section) fettuccine
• good bottled pesto
• extra-virgin olive oil
• fresh basil, 1 or 2 leaves.
• salt

1. Start a pot of water boiling for the fettuccine.
2. Break the eggs into a bowl so they’re ready to go.
3. Chop up the basil leaves.
4. Cut the fettuccine into 3rds or 4ths. Shorter noodles will work better here, but not SUPER short.
5. Start boiling the fettuccine. Add olive oil. Now, be fast…
6. baste the eggs in a non-stick pan using olive oil.
   1. it’s like fried eggs, exactly, except you don’t flip them.
   2. You cover them after they go into the pan, and let the steam cook the tops.
7. Drain the pasta (the eggs are almost done. Hurry!) and fold in the pesto and the fresh basil. Toss it, and slap it onto a plate . No time for art!  The eggs. THE EGGS!
8. Pull the eggs from the heat, and (assuming you’ve got good non-stick cookware and mad egg-basting skills) slide them straight from the pan onto the bed of pasta. Dead center, first try. Oh, yeah, you’ve got mad skills, this is going to be delicious.
9. Salt the top of the eggs. Probably. I did.

Assuming your fridge is stocked the way mine is, and you have all the tools at hand, this meal takes about 5 minutes to prepare. This is important, because you don’t want either the pasta or the eggs sitting for more than a minute before serving. The pasta might go sticky and gummy, and the eggs might go cold.