Hangover Helper

I don’t know about you, but for me, food serves as a more than adequate antidote for the increasingly painful and humbling hangover that clearly gets worse with age. As I get older, the required recovery time increases, making the once doable task of leaving the house to track down the perfect greasy hangover remedy a clear-as-day impossibility. So until some alcoholic genius invents the cure for the hangover in pill form, I’m going to have to resort to what I have in the fridge/pantry. In this case, I even planned ahead, picking up some pancetta before the weekend arrived, figuring I’d more than likely be hungover Saturday-Sunday. If you don’t have pancetta in your fridge, use bacon. If you don’t have bacon in your fridge...I would strongly recommend that you do. At all times. It's something that will never let you down.


So here’s what I was working with:

• Pancetta (or bacon)
• Pasta (any kind will work)
• Fresh garlic
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Parmesan cheese
• Crushed red pepper
• Salt
• Cracked pepper
• Dried oregano
• 1 egg
• butter

Cook up a few pieces of pancetta until nice and crispy. Slice or break the pancetta up into small pieces and set aside.

Finely chop one large clove of fresh garlic. Set aside.

Boil a pot of water. Once it’s boiling, throw a nice big palm-full of salt in there to season the water and add the pasta. I was only cooking for myself (shocker), so I just eye-balled enough for one person. Plan on cooking the pasta for 2 minutes less than the time it calls for on the box, as you’ll be finishing the pasta off a little later.

Heat the olive oil (about a tbs. or more) in a pan over medium heat. Heat an additional pan over medium heat with a tbs. of butter. As I’m writing this I realize that this sounds complicated. But if my hungover ass could pull this off, I’m pretty sure you can.

When the pasta is done, drain it in a colander and preserve some of the cooking liquid by putting a measuring cup in the bottom of the colander. Like so:

Add the chopped garlic to your pan with the olive oil, and the egg to the pan with the butter.

The garlic will not need to cook for very long. After about the 30 seconds, add the crushed red pepper to the pan, the preserved pancetta, and a tbs. of butter. Once that’s in there and all happy, add the pasta, as well as about a ⅓ cup of the pasta water. Turn the heat up to medium-high, toss that shit around and let the pasta coat itself in all that goodness.

Add a little more fresh olive oil to the pasta, as well as the Parmesan cheese, cracked pepper, oregano and continue tossing. Once all the cheese and the oil are married together, your egg should be about done. Place the pasta in a bowl with the sunny side up cherry on top. This is just what the doctor ordered.

When the yolk breaks and spreads throughout, oozing over the noodles and crispy pancetta, it’s like breakfast had sex with pasta.
In your mouth.


Eat this with a beer and go back to sleep.

Hangover cured.


- Fat Kid