Breakfast chilaquiles: a sort-of recipe, mostly in pictures. 12 March 2008 8:07 am
Posted by Tracy in : breakfast,cheese,cooking,eggs,pictures,recipes,vegan,vegetarian , trackbackYou know you want them, especially now that Jen’s fabulous huevos rancheros are off the Morning Glory organic specials menu (I know I didn’t sell any chilaquiles at all last week, but they’ll probably go back to being their usual popular selves now).
But speaking of Morning Glory, contrary to my experiences there, chilaquiles does not necessarily mean an egg or a tofu scramble (though we make it deliciously in both forms). In The Vegetarian Epicure, Book Two, Anna Thomas describes the dish as more of a tortilla-based breakfast casserole, bound with sour cream, milk and cheese, with eggs only appearing as a garnish, in hard-boiled form on top. (Her Chilaquiles with Mushrooms does use eggs, but is still a casserole.) That said, authenticity be damned. Here is a little photo essay about a quick and easy skillet-based chilaquiles-style egg concoction suitable for two hungry people to eat at pretty much any time, because I am all about eating eggs whenever I want, and yay for a delicious dish that makes a great, even fancy, accompaniment to leftover beans and rice, and can dress up corn tortillas even when they’ve gone a little sad and dried-out, like the four I found in my fridge a while back.
So. Start by cutting the aforementioned slightly sad and dried-out tortillas into strips and frying them until crispy, even browned in some spots, along with some flavorful ingredients like onions, chiles, tomatoes, tomatillos, and so on (in this case it was white mushrooms, some green olives, and a handful of diced onion):
You can also cheat by using tortilla chips (like we do at the café) but if you’ve got the time, tortillas have a heartier, more substantial texture which I really like a lot. Anyway, next up were eggs, four of them, beaten:
For a vegan version you could of course substitute about half a pound of crumbled tofu, perhaps seasoned with cumin and a pinch of chili powder and some chopped fresh cilantro if you have it. Here’s the very non-vegan scramble:
I get a little hungry just looking at it. Good thing they’re almost ready to eat! When the eggs are scrambled to mostly-done, top them with cheese (a little goes a long way, especially if you’re using something nice and flavorful like Cotija, which is sadly not the cheese in this picture):
and cover the pan to speed the melting while you prepare your side dishes, like warmed-up leftover beans and rice and/or quinoa (little pictures because it’s boring and also they were taken in slightly blurry HungryVision):
Aw, yeah. (For the vegan version, you can skip the last two picture-steps and go right to the garnishing and eating.) Here’s the money shot one more time, complete with a side of savory black beans and a green salsa garnish (sour cream is also nice):
If you click through to Flickr for the time stamps on those pictures, you’ll see I went from a few minutes into the scrambled tortillas (maybe five minutes into the whole process counting tortilla, mushroom, and olive prep) at 14:50 to seconds away from eating at 15:02. And that’s working sort of slowly with the heat turned down a little so I could take pictures and grate cheese without worrying about burning stuff. (I used the microwave to warm up the beans, but if you wanted to go stovetop you’d of course want to start those warming up first thing.) So there you have it. Breakfast chilaquiles: a fast, easy, and delicious meal suitable for any time of day — and even faster and easier as a tofu scramble. Enjoy!
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