Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Non-Mexican Breakfast Tacos


Ok, ok, so I am totally cheating. I think the vote for the last Choose Your Own Adventure post was evenly split between my grandmother’s spectacular blini and my own, somewhat less striking, breakfast tacos. Here’s the thing. I am painfully short on time these days. I will write about the tacos first because they are, well, tacos, and therefore easy. I will leave my grandmother’s blini to another day, which will hopefully be soon!

So. The breakfast tacos. The inspiration for these was part my newfound love of home made tortillas and part a brunch that Awesome Archna and I had at a wonderful Mexican place, Tu Y Yo. Archna ordered scrambled eggs with chorizo and they were wonderful. The sausage was ground up and mixed in with the eggs, coloring the whole business a burnt orange color (sigh, I am such a girl) and infusing the eggs with the oily chorizo loveliness.

I wanted desperately to make these eggs for one of my Battling Brunches with Maiya, which I have fallen so behind on (stupid thesis). I have long since stopped trying to wow her because that’s not really possible. This is after all, the woman who deep fried poached eggs in front of me. I wanted to make something that would taste simple and simply good. This turned out to be more challenging than I thought.

It appears that there are a few types of chorizo out and about – Mexican and Spanish/Portuguese. Mexican chorizo, like the stuff I had at Tu Y Yo, is sold raw, out of the casing, as basically a big pile of ground, spiced meat. The Spanish chorizo, on the other hand, is fully cooked and sold in links. I couldn’t find the Mexican stuff anywhere. I tried so hard. I even went to a butcher shop, but even they would only sell me the prepackaged, fully-cooked stuff.

With a heavy heart, I dragged my non-Mexican chorizo home to make faux Mexican breakfast tacos. The cooked chorizo tasted like a spicy kielbasa, which was really not the flavor I was shooting for, but beggars can’t be choosers. I fried chunks of the sausage in a little bit of olive oil till they became brown and crispy (oy yum. I could really just eat an entire plate of fried chorizo chunks). I then tossed in beaten eggs into the same pan, to scramble them in the chorizo oil. And uh, that was it. The end of the super un-complicated breakfast taco procedure.


The eggs were creamy and suffused with the chorizo oil, and when topped with fresh avocado and pico de gallo, and all wrapped up in a fluffy and slightly chewy flour tortilla, they were pure, non-Mexican taco breakfast beauty. I was happy with them, if not awed by their complexity. Sometimes that’s ok too.





10 comments:

JC said...

OK, now I'm hungry again. There was an article in the Dallas Morning News about how you can buy raw tortillas to cook at home. I had never heard of that before. They're supposed to be really good. I'll leave a link if I can find the article.

Anonymous said...

Great recipe Anna...you should submit it to our egg contest that we're running. Hope all is well!

JC said...

Here 'tis: Raw tortillas have home-cooked flavor

Anna said...

JC - Duuuude those tortillas look awesome! I am thinking I have zero chance of finding them in the Northeast, but I am going to damn well try.

Hillary - Thanks! I think my eggs may be a little too simplistic to win any awards though!

Naveen said...

Once again, I want to eat my computer screen. After trying out breakfasts ranging from dosas and "eight treasure porridge" to assorted veggie/fish paste concoctions in broth and pig offals, I am ready for a good breakfast taco. Please let me know if you are looking for any new competitors in your Battling Brunches.

Anonymous said...

Hi Anna,

That looks amazing! Unfortunatey a sudden splurge for Muesli didnt allow me to stick to my words and make the chorizo tacos for this weekend breakfast, but I'll promise to keep my word for next weekend.

By the way, I asked my mexican lab-mate and it seems hopeless to get mexican-style chorizo. So bad!

mehdi

Anonymous said...

Looks fantastic! I'll have to try them this weekend!

Mai said...

you know where they have mexican-style chorizo?

yep. in mexico.

you're coming.

July.

end of story

One Food Guy said...

I love Tu y Yo, one of the best Mexican restaurants in all of the greater Boston area! They have great sangria and some spicy beer they make, so good.

Your Non-Mexican brekkie tacos sound delicious, and whether they are Mexican, Spanish, Indian or Tibetan, all that matters is that they taste good! Nice job.

As for being short on time, I feel you there! I haven't posted in weeks and still have lots of good Indian stories to share!

Anonymous said...

LOL Boston Mexican Food I have had Mexican food from there not good not good @ all.......Come to Texas if you want good Mexican Food Southeast Texas for that matter.....