Soft taco, scrambled egg Mexican style breakfast

Man, is this ever good. Tortillas right off the griddle specifically for this breakfast. Where do you see that? Who does that? Nowhere! And nobody! That is what makes this breakfast so extraordinary. Plus the eggs are perfect. And the salad topping the things that I like, made specifically for me. It does not get better than this. If this place were a restaurant and I were owner-cook then I'd  feel comfortable charging $25.00 for three tacos. Oh, you can get them cheaper of course, but you cannot get them like this, not with the best ingredients. 

For three small taco-size tortillas I used 3/4 cup flour, about 1 + 1/2 tablespoon lard, and 3/4 teaspoon baking powder, 1/3 teaspoon salt, thereabout, and this time oregano is added to the dough, with sufficient water to bring the dough together and have the dough slightly wet and soft. Water direct from the faucet in two careful increments. 

I do not have sour cream but I do have plenty of heavy cream. About 1/5 cup heavy cream poured into a ramekin with one teaspoon rice vinegar, but it could be any vinegar. Within a few minutes the cream became thick as sour cream and does for scrambled eggs the exact same thing.

Scrambled eggs prepared as a failed Hollandaise sauce. Tiny curds form within 30 seconds of the large nob of cold butter completely melting by whisking continuously reaching into the corners of the pot. 

Jalapeños added after the scrambled eggs are completely finished, plus salt and pepper. Anything can be added at this point, cayenne, nutmeg, herb, lime juice, spices, mushrooms, whatever you like. 

Robusto cheese, lettuce, tomato with cilantro prepared mise en place for my personal preference for tacos. There was more of that taco filling remaining than tortillas, good bread portion maintenance there, eh? That there is what you call natural born Weight Watchers proclivity.

Pork chili, saffron rice, scrambled egg

I plated this wrongly. It is not a huge mound as it appears. That is wrong. It is two mounds, rice and scrambled egg, with pork chili spilled out between them. I should have poured out the chili onto the plate then went boink boink with the mounds. 

The rice has saffron threads dispersed in heated butter and then doused with white wine. It took a few minutes and another douse for all that to completely stain the rice.

The eggs are so close to sauce that they barely stack and they shimmer like gelatin when the plate is touched. They are so light and evanescent without being foamy that they are barely recognizable as scrambled eggs. When you see what the eggs have become you go, "whoa." When you taste them you are transported. 

The method to achieving extraordinary scrambled eggs is a tightly held secret that only us magician-types can perform. It takes years of practice so just forget about even trying. Although, a few rogue chefs, like Gordon Ramsey have revealed the secret method on YouTube. Don't watch the videos, they will only hurt you. And this is not reverse psychology either. And I am not a fibber.

Did I ever tell you of the morning I discovered how to lie? It was a momentous occasion. 

Lox on sourdough, scrambled egg

A while ago I discovered by accident a technique for creamy scrambled eggs that surpassed anything I had previously. This was quite an epiphany because I come from a egg-abusive household. My family's idea of scrambled eggs is to fry them so thoroughly that all trace of moisture is evaporated and the eggs tighten up so firmly they amount to another vulcanized substance altogether. The sequence goes like this:

raw --> cooked --> overcooked --> impossibly overcooked --> ridiculously abused --> done. 

This approach is on much lower heat and whisked continuously so that cold butter is slowly incorporated, as melted butter is slowly incorporated into a Hollandaise sauce except a lot less of it. It is finished with the addition of crème fraiche which provides the acid portion that lemon provides in an actual Hollandaise. The trick, and there is a trick, is to continuously remove the pot from the heat as soon as anything noticeable happens. The whole point is to avoid the formation of curds. You can see this happening as you whisk so pull off the pot and continue whisking off the heat so that the egg solidifies as a sauce and not as a pile of curds and then return to the heat and continue the thickening. The sequence goes like this:

raw --> sort of perhaps a little bit thicker --> seems like it's thickening --> yeah sure, it's getting thicker --> by golly we're on to something here --> well I'll be doggone, this is actually working --> this would make a good sauce --> hey look! I can control how thick this gets --> it's starting to stand up on its own --> I can probably stop now --> done. 

Save for the finish, salt, pepper, tarragon, chervil, basil, chives, whatever. Especially salt. Salt early in the whisking process can cause the eggs to stay liquid, so save it for last. 

I looked at a dozen YouTube videos searching for something that matched this approach. All I can say is, there are a lot of truly horrible scrambled eggs out there. I weep for my country for they know not what they do. Even the chefs are creating egg curds on excessive heat. And then at length I encountered my nemesis, Gordon Ramsay. Finally! One person out of all those housewives, husbands, cooks, and chefs, describes precisely the technique I landed on by accident -- a failed sauce. Here is Gordon Ramsay on too much coffee and on YouTube describing scrambled eggs. I urge you to try this method, it will change permanently your scrambled egg life. He also shows you a very simple and quite elegant vegetable accompaniment. I notice he prefers sourdough too, although he toasts it, which I never do to mine. Amusingly, he burns his toast. Oddly, none of the commenters over there pick up that this is basically a very thick sauce, specifically, a Hollandaise variation. 

Scrambled egg, refried beans, tortillas

It is hard to imagine that smashed beans with a color profile like this:

could have a flavor profile like this:

but it does. 

For six tortillas:

2  cups sifted a/p flour

1  tablespoon lard or lard/shortening mix

1  level teaspoon salt

1  level teaspoon baking powder

1 cup warm water adjusted to achieve a soft but still stiff dough, that is, not sticky.

Get the fat into the flour however you wish except by melting, whatareyou insane? In this case, a wedge of lard was lobbed off and rubbed into the flour by hand because I like doing that. The lard is smashed between fingertips then rapidly removed by rubbing un-fattened flour through the fingers, then the fat globs continually attacked in this manner, smashing and rapidly clearing from fingertips, until there are no more noticeable fat globs to smash. Ta daaaaaa.

Then the salt is added, then the baking powder, and last the water in increments, mixing as you go, until the desired softness and workability is achieved. 

Roll out and fry in a pan pre-heated to medium hot. Cooking takes no more than 45 seconds to one minute per side. Stack and cover. 

You can buy cheap-ass styrofoam tortilla warmers that work very well or you can buy very attractive ceramic tortilla warmers costing upward to $60.00 to over $100.00 depending on the degree of artistic design. I use a plate and an overturned bowl for service and then store the remainder in a plastic bag, but that's me, I got no class. 

I weighed these little guys just for fun. They are 3oz each. 

Six tortilly-yuhs. 

Scrambled egg, potatoes, bratwurst

Baked potato (microwave, 5 minutes) cut irregularly for added interest.

Potato tossed with seasoned olive oil.

Ordinary bratwurst.

Cut irregularly, casing left on. It could just as well been squeezed from the casing but I decided to keep the casing on this time. I avoid cutting discs because discs are boring. I blame childhood for instilling a lasting prejudice against fried slices of sausage. My mum, bless 'er, used to do that. The sausage would expand outside their casing during cooking and the sections would  harden in that shape which vexed me as a child. The cooked sausage chunks looked like this: A plate of macaroni in tomato sauce would surround these things. I couldn't peel off the casing because by then it was cooked firmly onto the sausage which was too spicy for my tender little mouth to begin with. I think it was always Polish sausage. The casing was tough and just chewing it hurt my little teefs. I hated those bastard sausage chunks. So out of deference to the child that still lives within me, I do not reproduce that unsettling experience. Years later I learned that somehow through all that my mum thought it was one our favorite dishes that she made. All that food-related suffering might have been avoided had I just complained more persistently. Nah. She efficiently ignored my plaintive caterwauling.

These are shown here being fried together but they were actually held in a bowl until the egg items below were ready. This photograph chronologically belongs down there↓The mixture could have included onion, garlic, any sturdy herb, the kind with woody stems, but those were omitted this time. Besides, the oil on the potato is seasoned and so is the bratwurst.

Canned jalapeños left over from before. For once they didn't sit in the refrigerator for more than a few days. They're not very hot.

This is a strong blue cheese, possibly Stilton. I looked for green and blue veins.

Mise en place for the eggs. Here too, onion or garlic or any herb could have been included, but today it is very simple. Strong, but simple.

All this time these eggs were warming in hot tap water. Chronologically this photograph belongs at the top, but it is placed here instead with the egg photographs to help reduce confusion. The idea is to avoid putting near freezing eggs directly into a hot pan. That is just too great a shock for tender eggs.

Thoroughly beaten, incompletely beaten, it doesn't make a difference. Frankly, I find incompletely beaten a little more ineresting. Some cooks add water. I don't yet see the point to that. The eggs are cooked on very low heat for briefly as possible and so stay very tender, in this case there is nothing for the water to do except dilute.

Olive oil or butter or both in the pan. The eggs spread and set. If the egg sets immediately then the pan is too hot. If that happens then remove it from the heat.

The curd is pushed toward the center and liquid egg flows into the evacuated space.

Eventually the liquid portion of the egg does not flow so easily. The curd in the center can be lifted and the pan tilted to encourage the remaining liquid egg to flow. This is a good time to remove the pan from the heat. Carryover heat will finish the egg.

This is a side-view to show the height of the built-up egg curd. The photo was taken quickly because at this point every additional second the egg stays in the pan counts. Now the cheese and jalapeños are distributed over the top. If it were an omelet it could be folded. If it were a fritata it could be slipped into the oven (the pan's handle must be metal). As it is, the egg is loosened from the pan and the egg disc slid directly onto a warmed plate.

Huevos, chile, tortilla

Huevos rancheros.

Tortillas:

1/2 cup very hot water (some recipes use milk, pero la madre del Roberto usada aqua caliente)
1 tablespoon lard
3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/3 teaspoon salt
1 Cup A/P flour

Mix, knead, rest. Divide into four segments. Roll the segments into balls. Heat a cast-iron pan or a griddle to medium hot.

Roll out tortillas

I fried them one at a time. They cook within one minute.

Pork chili:

* 2 LBs or so of pork shoulder, pork butt, pork roast, cut into reasonable chunks.

Pork chunks are browned in a stewing pot in batches to cover the bottom. Cooked pieces of meat are reserved in a separate bowl until the all the batches are done. The onion and garlic are browned in the same pot, then the pork is added back.

* 1 large white onion, diced

* 2 or 3 cloves of crushed garlic

* 1 teaspoon cumin

* 1 teaspoon coriander

* 2 teaspoons Mexican oregano

* 2 teaspoons thyme

* 1/2 teaspoon S/P

* 1 frozen package Hatch green chiles

* 1 small can diced jalapeños

* 1 small can diced chipotle in adobo

The Hatch chiles were purchased last year from a roadside vendor that roasted them in one of those gigantic rotating roasting cages while we waited underneath a tent. I chatted it up with the people there in the shade of the tent.

The chiles have been sitting at the bottom of the freezer since then. They're not in the best shape.

Eggs:

The eggs are scrambled gently as if making an omelette. Very low heat, the curd pushed toward the center of the pan. The liquid egg flows to the area of the pan vacated by the curd pushed away. A pile of gently cooked egg curd is built up in the center of the pan. Removed from heat well before the surface is set so that a thin layer of liquid egg remains on the surface like a sauce. Tap out of the pan onto a plate without folding. Or, go ahead and fold for double thickness of piled up eggy goodness.  

Cheese, cilantro.