Fried egg pasta is another delicious and frugal dish of Greek cuisine. A simple-to-make Mizithra pasta with an egg on top.

This traditional Greek pasta dish comes from the Area of Mani in Peloponnese and it is called Tsouhti. Pasta with egg can be a flavorsome quick lunch or dinner. And proves that you don't always need a sauce to make a flavorful pasta dish!

Table Of Contents

Ingredients
What Is Mizithra Cheese?
How To Make Pasta With Egg
How To Fry An Egg
Recipe

Ingredients

For this pasta with egg and cheese, you need the following ingredients:

Bucatini pasta or Spaghetti No. 9. If you like you can use plain spaghetti or Linguine.
Free-range eggs.
Sheep butter in the original recipe though you can use plain butter as well.
Mizithra cheese grated. Can't find Mizithra cheese? Opt for Pecorino Romano or Parmesan not exactly the same thing but will work well for this recipe.
Extra virgin olive oil (adds more flavor than plain olive oil).
Freshly ground pepper.

Additional Ingredients You May Add: Yes, the obvious ones that come to your mind! Bacon, ham, or some finely chopped Greek sausage. To add any of these saute for a minute or two before tossing the pasta in the pan.

What Is Mizithra Cheese?

Mizithra cheese is a Greek cheese made of cheese whey. From either sheep milk or a mixture of sheep and goat milk. During the process of cheese making where milk curds separate from the whey (the milk curds are turned into Feta cheese), the leftover liquid whey is reheated, and the thick cream that rises on the surface is Mizithra. Which is skimmed and drained. Italian Ricotta cheese is made almost the same way.

In Greece, there's soft Mizithra and hard Mizithra cheese. Fresh Mizithra is soft and spreadable and can be sweet and almost unsalted while hard Mizithra is ripened and then grated. In Crete, Mizithra is naturally fermented to produce sour Mizithra cheese (Xino-Mizithra) but that's a delicacy that even in Greece is hard to find nowadays.

How To Make Pasta With Egg

To make this pasta with egg recipe, first fry the eggs in extra virgin olive oil and butter. Then remove the eggs and in the same pan toss in the pasta and stir to mix with the oil and butter. Stir in the Mizithra cheese and cook for 2-3 minutes. Serve the pasta with the fried egg on top and sprinkle with some extra Mizithra cheese.

How To Fry An Egg

To make the perfect fried egg, heat the butter and olive oil over medium heat. We don't want the butter to burn or reach a very high temperature and crisp the egg white as soon as we add it to the pan (unless crisp edges are what you're aiming for).

As soon as the fat in the pan (oil and butter) is sizzling, break the egg on your counter and add to the pan. You can fry two eggs at once. Cook them for 2-3 minutes while basting the egg whites with some of the fat from the pan. You can do this with a spoon or use a wooden spatula and push some of the oil from the sides towards the eggs. I like to add a splash to the yolk as well. But you can skip that if you want the yolk to be ultra-runny.

For Extra Cooked Yolks: Either baste them with hot oil, flip them for a minute or two, or put a lid on the pan and turn the temperature to medium-low

For Crisp Egg Whites: Heat the olive oil without the butter over medium-high heat until very hot, toss in the egg and immediately turn the heat to medium-low and then add the butter in as well. Or heat the butter and oil together over medium heat add the eggs and cook as long as needed to get the whites as crisp as you like (baste only towards the last minute if necessary in that case).

Side Dishes To Serve With Egg Pasta Dish

Recipe