Breakfast Tacos

So, breakfast tacos may not be the most innovative or exciting dish on the planet, but this recipe is very dear to me.  Not only is it the first meal I ever created, but it also contains a super secret ingredient that will finally be revealed to the world [wide web] ...

As for the wonderful things about breakfast tacos, like most of the recipes this month, you can mix-n-match and load it up any way you please-- it can be a great way to work veggies into your morning!  And for those looking for quick fixes before jetting off to work, this taco filling keeps quite well, so be sure to try out making a big batch on Sunday and then reheating the next morning or two.

Now that I've digressed, let's get back to the big secret.  This is obviously a tex-mex dish, which opens the door for any number of special sauces.  Lots of people plop their favorite salsa on top before wrapping it up and some adventurous types will mix in tomatillos or green chili sauce, but twelve-year-old me had a whole different idea...

...

...

...




...




...

Yup, that's it.  Taco Bell sauce.  And for those of you wondering how I manage to cook with this wonderful sauce while living oceans away from any sign of a Taco Bell, it's time for another confession: I horde it.  About once a year, somewhere in a video surveillance room back at my neighborhood Taco Bell in Texas, there is a security guard cursing, "There's that blonde girl emptying the mild sauce bucket again!"  I've left books and shoes and sweaters behind when my luggage gets too heavy, but I will always make room for a pound of sauce packets.  I know I probably shouldn't be confessing to pseudo-petty theft online, but with Taco Bell dinners popping up in grocery stores nowadays, common' guys-- SELL THE SAUCE!  Then maybe I wouldn't have to steal it...

[Prep: -- / Cook: 15-20min]

- breakfast sausage of choice (~ 3 small links, 2 patties or 1/3 of a sausage roll)

- 3 large eggs

- 1/2 cup shredded Mexican cheese blend (cheddar and monterrey jack)

- 4 packets of secret sauce

- flour tortillas

- seasoned salt (or just salt)

- black pepper

- dash of milk

1.  In a large skillet, heat the sausage links (cook thoroughly if not pre-cooked).

2.  Meanwhile, beat/whisk the eggs, 2 packets of sauce, salt & pepper and a dash of milk (no more than 1/4 cup) in a bowl.

3.  When the sausage is finished, remove to a bowl or plate, cut-up and mash with a fork to get ground sausage.

4.  In the same skillet, scramble the eggs in the sausage grease.  Just as the eggs are almost fully cooked, mix in the cheese and add the sausage back in.

5.  Divide the mixture as desired across flour tortillas.  Top with remaining sauce and wrap up tight.

6.  Ready to eat!

[Serves 2]

Notes

• Cooking the eggs in the sausage grease is obviously not the healthiest idea, but it does make for better flavored eggs.  Proceed as you wish.
• It's taken years of tweaking to get the sauce "dynamics" perfect.  You get a better kick from the sauce when it goes on last, but some still needs to be mixed in to make the eggs right.  And, of course, more is even better...I just have to ration my supply!
• As a twelve-year-old, I put the heated/cooked sausage in a plastic baggie and then mashed it up with my hands.  It was quite efficient.  Not sure why I stopped doing it that way...

Variations

• I personally like a lot of meat (sorry Vegetarian friends!), so the main way I tweak this is to add potatoes/hash browns and bacon/bacon bits.
• They're also great with veggies-- you can always pile on onions, mushrooms and peppers.  Try a frozen mix to keep the recipe quick and easy.
• Sausage: use your favorite.  Chorizo would be fabulous and oh-so much more Mexicano, but I can't eat pretty much all store-bought chorizo and therefore cannot speak for it.  What I can speak for, though, is the ease of cutting open a simple sausage link from the butcher's/meat section.  Just add some chili powder/pepper/cilantro, etc and the meat's already conveniently ground up.
• I know my secret sauce may not be for everyone.  I just hope that the next time you decide to make breakfast tacos, jazz them up a bit with some taco sauce or salsa before it's finished cooking to give it a bit more punch!

Quiche Lorraine

My mother's quiche is one of the foods I look forward to most when I go home.  So incredibly easy to make, though, I figured it was about time I got her recipe and started making them myself!  This is another French breakfast, a delightfully fluffy and cheesy egg pie that you can add all sorts of meats, veggies and seasonings to and fix up any way you'd like.  Below is probably the most common, the "Lorraine" which uses swiss cheese, onions and bacon/ham.  Quiche also keeps quite well, so you could bake up a couple one night or weekend and reheat a slice or two in the morning before work!

Oh, and if you think you're one of those "real" men out there that just doesn't eat quiche, just remember: French men eat quiche, and the ladies seem to like them ;)


[Prep: 10-20min/ Bake: 30-45min]

- 2 ready-made frozen pie shells (defrosted)
- 4 eggs
- 2 cups whipping cream or half&half
- 1/2 cup crumbled bacon/bacon bits or cubed ham/chopped up ham slices
- 1 cup shredded, cubed or cut-up slices Swiss cheese
- chopped onion (as desired)
- dash salt, pepper and cayenne pepper/chili powder


1.  If necessary, cook or prepare bacon/ham, cut-up the cheese & chop the onion.
2.  [optional] Place the pastry shells in the oven covered with a piece of aluminium foil and bake at 400F for about 5-10 minutes to help the shell cook.
3.  Meanwhile, in a large bowl, beat eggs, cream and seasonings.
4.  Remove the pie shells from the oven and sprinkle the meat, cheese and onion evenly into the shells.  Pour the egg mixture on top and bake for 30-45 minutes until you can insert a knife in the center and it comes out clean.
5.  Let stand for about 10 minutes and ready to eat!


Notes

• Almost no matter what you do, the upper crust will burn a bit.  It's never really bothered me, but many recipes advise you to wrap aluminium foil around the edge of the crust while the pie is baking to keep it from burning.  A bit more trouble, but may be worth it.
• There is something just so incredibly fluffy about a restaurant quiche that is hard to replicate at home, but I finally uncovered the secret.  When you beat the eggs, separate the yolks from the whites and beat the whites first.  Whisk or beat the daylights out of them until they get really bubbly and foamy, then whisk/beat in the cream.  Finally gently mix up the yolks and swirl them into the mixture.  Just did this- it works!

Variations

Crustless "frittata" version with tomatoes and mushrooms

• As I said, you can add all sorts of things to your quiche.  Veggies like spinach, mushrooms and spinach are a good place to start.  You can also try swapping out different cheeses for slightly different flavors.
• From there you can try any assortment of things.  Some popular ones include:
• crabmeat or other seafood
• olives, anchovies & tomatoes
• ground beef & taco seasonings
• An important potential issue you may have is a lack of ready-made pie crust and a strong desire not to bake your own.  Here are some quick ways to make do without the frozen crust:
• Go crustless:
• You can just make it in a pie pan or casserole dish without a crust, but you can also add a bit (like 1/2-3/4 cup) of flour, biscuit mix or some crushed up saltine crackers to the mix to give it some substance.
• Make mini muffin quiches by just spraying a muffin tin with cooking spray and baking.  (might benefit from some flour/biscuit mix mixed in)
• Bake it frittata-style by either cooking the mix in an oven-safe skillet in the oven or by cooking it on the stovetop until it's heated through.  They say to cook it on the stovetop, just periodically lift the egg away from the edges and let the uncooked egg flow down, but I tried this yesterday without much luck.  It will cook through this way, but it takes a lot of attention, and just didn't taste very quiche-like to me in the end.
• I read a crazy recipe that claims you can make a quiche/frittata in the microwave by using a 2qt microwave-safe dish and running it on 70% power, stirring every 2 minutes until the egg is set (about 6-10 minutes total).  
• Substitue a quick crust:
• Layer the bottom of a casserole dish with refrigerated crescent dough before adding the filling on top.
• Flatten and layer plain bread slices across the bottom of a casserole dish (and maybe coat with a little melted butter).  Or flatten the slices of bread, cut into half or fourths and shove into a muffin tin to make mini quiches.
• If you feel like almost-baking, crush up 1 cup's worth of saltine crackers, add about 1/4 cup of melted butter/margarine and a splash of water.  Mix and then press into the bottom of a casserole dish or pie pan.

The Everyman's Croque-Madame

I had my first croque-madame a few months ago at this lovely cafe on the Amstel called Ysbreeker.  It was also the first real French food I'd ever had and I was instantly in love.  A croque-madame is something like a grilled ham and cheese, except ten times better because it's smothered in white sauce and topped with an over-easy egg.  It's a step up from the slightly more popular croque-monsieur, which is the same thing minus the egg.

I just had to learn how to make this wonderful sandwich in my own kitchen, but I soon learned that it's a bit fancier than my typical repertoire- mostly because it's supposed to be topped with a Mornay or Bechamel sauce, which is sort of like a roux with cheese mixed in.  Now, I've seen a couple of sites which claim that a roux or bechamel is an easy creation, but in my book, anything that involves whisking a specific proportion of flour into "scalded" milk is not easy.  Actually, anything that involves flour, cornstarch, baking soda or the like are automatically filed in my not-easy category.  I don't even keep these things in my kitchen.

At any rate, I have thus developed an OntheFly version which replaces the French white sauce with a much simpler out-of-a-packet cheese sauce which, to my oh-so-refined tastes, comes out just the same as the one in the cafe.  The other hang-up is the cheese.  The sandwich is typically made with emmental, gruyere or, in the case of this Dutch cafe, beemster (gouda) cheese.  Here in the land of cheese, shredded gouda is everywhere you look, but outside of Holland and Europe, you should be able to find it, but it won't be conveniently pre-shredded.  The key is really that the cheese is strong, so a shredded or sliced swiss or even sharp cheddar will probably do the trick!

[Prep: -- / Cook: 10-20m]

- 2 slices of bread (works best with white)
- 1 egg
- 1 or 2 slices of deli ham
- ~1/2 small packet white cheese sauce mix (such as McCormick's alfredo, 4 cheese or carbonara)
- 1/2 cup milk
- shredded cheese
- butter/margarine

1.  In a small saucepan, mix the cheese sauce with the milk and bring to a boil.  You may want to add even as much as 1/4 cup more milk because the sauce really thickens up as you're putting the sandwich together.
2.  Heat a dab of butter in a smal pan and place one of the slices of bread down.  Spoon on some of the cheese sauce to coat the bread.  Then, add shredded cheese and a slice of ham.
3.  Put the second slice of bread on top and after about a minute, flip and grill for only a minute or two more.
4.  Remove the sandwich to a plate and while the pan is still hot, add a dab more butter and quickly fry an over-easy egg.  Crack the egg in the pan and once the white is solid and opaque (about 2-3m), flip and cook for about 30s-1m longer.
5.  While the egg is frying, completely saturate the sandwich with the cheese sauce and then coat with a layer of shredded cheese.  Top with the over-easy egg.
6.  Ready to eat!

Notes

• What really makes this sandwich so excellent is the combination of the runny egg yolk, cheese sauce and soggy bread.  That being said, I've ruined the dish over and over again by over-cooking the egg or breaking the yolk somehow.  An easier alternative may be to just go with the egg completely sunny-side up,  ie: only cook the egg on one side until the white is really solid.