Egg Barley Stracciatella

Author Notes

While small and somewhat sparsely stocked, the Haledon Pork Store outside of Paterson, New Jersey -- as any good Sopranos fan would expect -- carries the requisite range of homemade sausages (both fresh and dried), locally made marinara and other Italian specialties. However, along the back wall, among the bags of imported dried pasta and boxed tiramisu mix, I came across a few ingredients I'd never seen before -- including a bag of something that looked a little like yellow Grape Nuts. The package included the words "egg barley" and explained that this bag of shriveled little nuggets had originated in Hungary. We walked out with a dried landjaeger sausage and a small packet of some sort of smoked salami for my fiancé, and 1/4 pound of the homemade bologna and a packet of the yellow Grape Nuts for me. I did some research when I got home and discovered that the egg barley, also know as tarhonya, is a popular Eastern European egg pasta. It's typically sautéed in butter and then braised in a little bit of broth, but it can also just be boiled and added to soup. Which is just what I decided to do with it. In honor of the Haledon Pork Store's Italian owners, I thought I'd boil up some of my newly acquired egg barley and incorporate it into a simple version of stracciatella, or Italian egg drop soup, which my mother used to make a lot while I was growing up. It's a savory, comforting soup that pleases kids and adults alike, and the addition of the egg pasta transforms it into something hearty enough to serve as a meal. If your local pork store doesn't carry egg barley, this soup would be almost as good with orzo or ditalini or any other small dried pasta. —Merrill Stubbs