The spaghetti omelette, known as frittata di pasta in Italian, is a typical Neapolitan recipe also known as macaroni omelette or pasta omelette. It is a unique dish, mouth-watering and to be tasted rigorously in slices. Do not waste anything and reuse food with the tasty recipes of the leftover cuisine!

A bit of history about the spaghetti omelette

The pasta omelette is the typical dish for days spent at the beach or going out of town, but also on Monday, the day after the abundant Sunday lunch. The spaghetti omelette accompanies the children to school, goes to the office, goes to the shop. It is the perfect recycling dish, because it allows you not to waste the leftover pasta from the day before.

Grandmothers, aunts and mothers keep the secret recipe for a perfect pasta omelette, but who invented it? The beginnings are not clearly defined, since there are no literary sources that speak about it. However, it is certain that it arises from the imperative need of the Neapolitan people to carry the already cooked pasta with them, and therefore creating a form in which the pasta would have remained “al dente”, in English “to the tooth”, suitable to be consumed cold and easily transportable.

We don’t know who was the inventor of the pasta omelette so in order to try to understand its origin we have to go back in time to the mother of all pasta omelettes: the “used pasta”. By this term we mean the pasta that was left in the bowl in the evening after dinner. A phenomenon that occurred among bourgeois families, since hunger was often the only thing that was left in public housing in the evening. At dawn, after a long and generally freezing night, the most suitable food was provided by the leftovers from the previous evening. Among the various foods, the “used pasta” was so appreciated that often, at lunch or at dinner, when pasta was immersed in the boiling water, those who cooked it added a few more portions, knowing that it would not be wasted.

Curiosities about the pasta omelette

The Neapolitan spaghetti omelette is a “recycling” dish, so you can enrich the pasta with leftover ham and salami, cheese or mozzarella. Furthermore, there is no need to prepare the tomato sauce specifically for the spaghetti omelette: if you have a little left over, it is even better if you have some Neapolitan ragù, you can reuse it, as per tradition!

Recipe for the spaghetti omelette

In times of particular poverty, in which you could not afford to waste anything, the leftover pasta could not be thrown away, so was born this delicacy! Let’s see the recipe for about 8 people.

Ingredients

• 500 g of spaghetti
• 100 g of whole milk
• Salt to taste
• Extra virgin olive oil to taste
• 100 g of Parmesan cheese PDO
• 8 eggs
• Black pepper to taste

For the tomato sauce

• 700 g of tomato puree
• Basil to taste
• Extra virgin olive oil to taste
• 1 white onion
• Salt to taste

Preparation

Boil a pot with water and salt it when it has reached the boiling point.

Then peel and chop the onion. Pour it into a saucepan in which you have heated the oil. Let it dry for a few minutes on low heat, stirring often, then add the tomato puree. Season with salt, cover with the lid and cook gently for half an hour. At the end of cooking, flavour the sauce using the basil.

Meanwhile, cook the spaghetti al dente. Once cooked, drain and pour into a bowl, cover with the sauce and mix thoroughly.

Let cool and in the meantime prepare the egg cream: in a bowl break them and add the grated cheese, milk, salt and pepper. Beat with a whisk to mix everything.

Pour the mixture over the pasta and mix well. Pour a little oil into a 30 cm diameter pan (measured on the surface) with a fairly high edge, heat slightly and pour the mixture into it.

Spread the pasta evenly with the help of a spatula, then close with the lid and cook over medium heat for 10 minutes. After that, use a pizza plate (or a smooth lid) to flip the omelette.

Slide it back into the pan and continue cooking on the other side for another 10 minutes without a lid.

Your pasta omelette is ready! Enjoy your meal!