Thursday 21 February 2013

Some Breakfast Dishes featuring Eggs

There no need for anything in the way of recipes here....

Huevos Rancheros.
Fried eggs served over tortillas with a fresh tomato salsa.

Migitas.
Scrambled eggs mixed with strips of fried tortilla.

Huevos Divorciados.
Two fried eggs, one smothered in a cooked tomato salsa the other in a tomatillo salsa.

Huevos con Chorizo.
Scrambled eggs mixed with chorizo. Mexican chorizo unlike the Spanish cured version is fresh, it required cooking and cannot be eaten raw. When cooked it breaks into a fine mince consistency.

Huevos del Albañil - Bricklayers eggs.
An omlette (or sometimes fried eggs) smothered in tomatillo salsa and served with avocado and crema.

Machaca.
Scrambled eggs with dried beef, tomato, onion, chile and garlic.

Huevos Revueltos.
Scrambled eggs with tomato, chile, onion and garlic.

Breakfast Burritos.
No point trying to compete with Robert Rodriguez on this one! 
Enchilladas

Yet more cookbook recommending...

La Cocina Mexicana.

La Cocina Mexicana: Many Cultures, One Cuisine is by Marilyn Tausend and Ricardo Muñoz Zurita. It's a beautiful book with a carefully selected range classic recipes giving a very good overview of Mexican cooking, along with evocative descriptions of people and places, and some interesting historical context for the dishes.

I really enjoy this book. It's not fussy or glossy. What I find most impressive is that it is not simply content to rush through simple versions of the "greatest hits" dishes and takes a much more considered and careful look at the cusine.

The font for the recipe titles looks like it was lifted from the cover of a death metal album, and that is as much fault as I can find with the book. It belongs in any respectable collection.

La Cocina Mexicana
The Mexican Slow Cooker

The Mexican Slow Cooker by Deborah Schneider was, on the other hand, a disappointment. It's a fine idea, well produced, but I expected more. I was really looking forward to this book and getting ideas for soups and tacos guisados (the stewed type of taco filling, pibil, barbacoa, tinga etc.) that could be made in a slow cooker.

While there are recipes for some of these the book is padded out with a lot of very standard Mexican fare, only very tangentially, if at all, related to the slow cooker.

The Mexican Slow Cooker

Wednesday 20 February 2013


Tortillas de Harina

Salsa de Chile de Arbol

This is a very hot sauce that is used to accompany Guadalajara's special Tortas Ahogadas, a pork sandwich in a crusty bap drowned (hence the "ahogada") in a tomato salsa. This fiery sauce is served on the side, though some people do drown the sandwich entirely in this sauce and omit the tamer tomato salsa altogether.

  • Chiles de Arbol - about 50 - a good fistful, toasted and then simmered in enough water to cover for 20 minutes or so.
  • 2 cloves of garlic - preferably toasted.
  • A tablespoon of cider vinegar.
  • A tablespoon of sesame seeds - preferably toasted.
  • Some onion - not much.
  • A couple of cloves
  • A teaspoon of salt
Blend all of the ingredients in a blender. Some water might be required to get things going, but don't add too much. It's a very hot sauce so it better that it's slightly thick and you use just a little. the consistently should be about that of pouring cream.

Even though the sauce is hot, it does still have flavour. Just remember not to rub your eyes!