If you have bacon, eggs and a pack of ramen noodles in the pantry, this quick dinner (or breakfast or lunch) comes together in a snap. The strategy: Cook the noodles in a Parmesan-rich broth in the same pan you use to cook the bacon. The clever cook who invented this is the novelist Stacey Ballis, a regular contributor to the breakfast blog Extra Crispy. Since ramen noodles are parcooked, they quickly soften and soak up the broth. (Stirring in eggs thickens it into a sauce.) If you use pancetta and good Parmesan, it tastes surprisingly like the Roman original. But it is always delicious and filling, and even more unctuous if you add a runny fried egg on top.

Featured in: A Modern Cook’s Pantry.