Food Ideas: Desayuno Mexicano - Mexican Breakfast

Huevos a la mexicana con frijoles

I love breakfast food. Perfectly crispy hashbrowns, smoky bacon, fresh eggs… mmm. Or French toast or pancakes with maple syrup, also mmm… While I sometimes have a hankering for an American breakfast that I can only satisfy at home here in Puebla (restaurants here just don’t do hashbrowns, French toast, or pancakes well at all), I LOVE a good Mexican breakfast. Breakfast dishes here in central Mexico are essentially a dozen different ways to combine eggs, tortillas, and salsas with a side of delicious beans.

You don’t really need a recipe for most of these, so what I figured I would do is run through a list of some of my favorites just to give you ideas for a weekend breakfast or even a midnight snack. If you have some salsa on hand (hopefully that you made yourself!), eggs, and tortillas (corn or flour), you’re already more than halfway there. Be aware that the amount of salsa in a Mexican breakfast can be high. Even if you keep it mild, it’s still a lot of acid. Can be a bit much if you’re not used to it, but once you get used to it, you will crave it in the morning. So here it goes. Pick your favorite, put your spin on it, make sure you have some beans on the side, and enjoy!

Here are a few different versions of scrambled eggs:

Huevos a la mexicana: These are scrambled eggs with tomato, onion, and chile (usually Serrano or jalapeño) to reflect the colors of the Mexican flag. Restaurants sometimes just toss some pico de gallo in scrambled eggs and call it good. I prefer the way my mother-in-law makes them (she doesn’t cook much, but her huevos a la mexicana are perfect). Basically, the key is to cook the tomato like crazy and use a fair amount, one roma tomato per egg. Heat some oil, add the chopped tomato with a little onion, and sautee it over medium-high heat for 5-10 minutes, or until the tomato starts to brown. Add as much or as little diced chile as you like, cook for a minute, then add your beaten eggs and cook however you like ‘em. With the tomatoes almost caramelized, you end up with sweet and spicy. Perfect.

Huevos con tocino, jamón o chorizo: Fry up either a little chopped bacon, ham, or chorizo, then throw your beaten egg in and scramble. Great on a warm flour tortilla with a little Tabasco sauce.

Huevos al albañil: Heat up either green or red salsa, scramble your eggs, then dump them into the hot salsa. They should be thoroughly bathed in the salsa.

Here are a few different versions of eggs sunny-side up or over-easy:

Huevos rancheros: Red salsa is the most traditional for this, but if you have green, go for it. Heat a little oil in a pan, quickly fry two tortillas (corn or flour), set them aside, and then cook your eggs as desired. Place one egg on top of each tortilla, then pour warmed salsa over the top. If you have it, add a little shredded cheese or cream. You can also add a slice of ham in between the tortilla and the egg. Classic.

Huevos divorciados: You need green and red salsa for this one. Basically, make huevos rancheros, but bathe one egg in green and the other in red. Makes for a slick presentation.

Huevo estrellado: If you’re not in the mood for a lot of salsa, just fry up your tortilla(s) and put your fried egg on top. It’s a nice alternative to toast.

And one of my all-time favorites at home or at a restaurant…

Chilaquiles: For chilaquiles, you need a far amount of either red or green salsa, and you need to make your own tortilla chips from corn tortillas (If you buy them, make sure they are chips made from actual tortillas and not flavored in any way. This dish won’t work with your run-of-the-mill commercial tortilla chips. They would fall apart and be too salty.). It’s really easy and a great use of stale tortillas. Cut them into little triangles (8 per tortilla) and fry them in batches in hot oil, draining them on paper as you remove them. Once your chips are ready, slice a little onion (1/4 of an onion or so), heat a tablespoon of oil in a large frying pan, fry the onion for a couple minutes, then dump in the salsa. Heat the salsa for a couple minutes, then add the chips to the pan and toss to coat. Once they are evenly coated and just starting to become a little more pliable, take them off the heat, plat them, and top with shredded cheese (cotija is excellent), sour cream, raw onion if you like, and avocado if you have it on hand. To really send this dish over the top, you can add a protein, like shredded chicken, a couple of fried eggs, or even a piece of skirt steak. Yeah, that's good.

Recipe: Vegetarian Chili (Crockpot)

This is a simple recipe for vegetarian chili that I’ve developed with a little experimentation. It’s great because it cooks in the crockpot. You can prepare it the night before, leave everything in the crockpot in the fridge overnight, then plug it in and turn it on when you go to work and come home to a delicious slow-cooked meal. Prep time here is minimal (about 10-15 minutes), and you only need one pan apart from the crockpot. You could make the chili without precooking anything, but I think you get a deeper flavor if you sautee the veggies first with the chili powder as described here.

Since the chili is done in the crockpot, all of the beans and lentils are dried instead of canned. They are cheaper this way, and the flavor and texture are better.

As far as vegetables go, celery, onion, and carrot are the base, but from there, add whatever you have in your fridge. Bell peppers are really good. You could also throw in potatoes, winter squash, peas, corn, turnips, etc. I would just avoid soft vegetables like zucchini as they will just disintegrate with the slow cook time.

If you wanted to do a meat chili, you could follow the same steps, just cut down on the amount of legumes and brown the meat before adding the veggies and chili powder.

The spiciness of your chili really depends on the chili powder you use. If you use the chili powder recipe I posted yesterday along with the ingredients outlined here, you’ll have a nice, medium-hot final product.

Like all chili, this recipe is great to freeze. Since we normally cook for two, we usually have quite a bit leftover, even after eating it for lunch the next day. Just put the leftovers in a sealed container in the freezer and thaw on the stove or in the microwave whenever you want. It’s a homemade TV dinner.

Toppings should be whatever you like; cheese, yogurt or sour cream, raw onion, chopped cilantro, chives, corn bread, etc.

Vegetarian Chili (quantity is for a 3 liter crockpot)

3 Tablespoons veggie oil (this is the only added fat)

1 medium onion, chopped

2 stalks celery, chopped

2 medium carrots, chopped (total volume of carrots and celery should equal the onion)

2 bay leaves

1 jalapeño, seeded and diced

4 cloves garlic, minced

3 Tablespoons chili powder (see recipe here)

½ ounce tequila or mezcal or ½ cup of beer (optional)

2 cups dried, mixed lentils and beans (I usually use about ¾ cup of brown lentils, ¾ cup pinto beans, ¼ cup black beans, ¼ cup garbanzos. Use whatever beans you like best. I recommend a good amount of lentils as it makes for a “meaty” chili. Red lentils in particular give a nice meaty texture to the finished dish.)

1 cup stewed or canned tomatoes (recipe here)

2 teaspoons salt

1 Tablespoon brown sugar

Water to cover (I’ve used stock in place of water before. It doesn’t make much difference though. The flavor from the spices and the beans is quite enough.)

In a large frying pan over medium-high heat, warm the oil and add the onion, carrot, and celery. Cook until the vegetables begin to soften, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and jalapeño and cook for another 2 minutes, until the garlic is fragrant. Add the chili powder and stir to combine. Cook for about another minute until the chili powder begins to darken.

If you are using tequila, beer, or mezcal, add it now to deglaze the pan, cook until the liquid evaporates, scraping the bottom and sides of the pan, and then dump everything into the crockpot. If you are skipping the alcohol, dump the cooked veggies into the crockpot, then add a cup of water to the hot pan and scrape the sides and bottom. You don’t want to lose all that chili powder!

Rinse the beans and lentils and remove any pits or stones you may find. Add them to the crockpot. Add the tomatoes, salt, and brown sugar. Fill the crockpot within a ½ inch of the top with water. Mix everything to combine.

Cook on low for 8-10 hours or on high for 4-6 hours. Serve with desired toppings and freeze any extras. Enjoy!

Note: Chili is an acid bomb of a dish. The added sugar in this recipe will help to smooth things out a bit, along with yogurt, cheese, or sour cream if you add them. Sometimes though, the tomatoes you get are just more acidic. If you try the cooked chili and you think it might burn a whole through your stomach, add about ¼ teaspoon of baking soda to it and stir before serving. This will help to neutralize some of the acidity.

Recipe: Chili Powder

Grinding your own spices and making your own spice blends is really simple. The main advantage of making your own, other than cost (whole spices are usually much cheaper), is flavor. What you buy already ground at the supermarket is not necessarily that fresh, and even if it is, how long is it going to take you to use up that whole thing of ground cinnamon? By the time next year rolls around and you want to sprinkle some on your French toast, it will have almost zero flavor. If you buy whole cinnamon sticks though, you can grind as needed, and the whole sticks will still be flavorful for a long time (like years).

The only kitchen gadget you need is a spice grinder. In my experience, they can be hard to find in the store as they are not a sought-after item, but we live in the age of the Internet! Find one online. Should run you about $25-45 depending on how fancy or powerful it is.

Two spice blends I commonly use are chili powder and curry powder (or garam masala). For right now, let’s talk chili. Next time you’re in the store, or if you have it in your cabinet, pick up a thing of chili powder and read the ingredients. If they bother to list the spices, you’ll probably see cumin and pepper and several different chiles. There is also most likely onion powder, garlic powder, and some additive to prevent caking. When you make the powder yourself, you can skip the onion and garlic powder. I think they put that in there to cover up the loss of flavor from old, ground spices. You’re going to put garlic and onion in your chili, so you don’t need the powder.

I've tried several different recipes for chili powder that I've found online, sometimes with lots of different spices. I think I have nailed it now though. Not to say there won't be future experiments, but this blend is really good.

This recipe makes about ½ cup of chili powder, enough for about three batches of chili. It is spicy. If you want to make it milder, cut down on or cut out the chiles de arbol. They are there for heat. The guajillos and anchos are there for flavor, don’t skip them. And if you want things to be hotter, add a couple more of the little guys.

Another great thing about making your own chili powder is you can put what you want into it. If you want to go heavier on the cumin, do it. Want to add cocoa powder? It also adds nice flavor. For your first time though, follow the recipe, other than adjusting for heat as needed. It is tested and solid.

So here is the recipe.

Left to right: anchos, guajillos, chiles de arbol

Chili Powder

2 ancho chiles

2 guajillo chiles

5 chiles de arbol

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

1 teaspoon coriander seeds

½ inch piece of cinnamon

½ teaspoon black peppercorns

Remove the stems and seeds from the chiles and tear them into pieces. Place everything except the peppercorns in a dry skillet over medium-high heat. Stirring constantly, dry fry the spices until they begin to turn a few shades darker and become very fragrant. It should take 8-10 minutes. Don’t let the spices burn. If anything does turn black, remove it. Probably your best measuring stick are the coriander seeds, since they start out pretty light. Once they are a golden brown, you’re ready.

A word of caution: as those chiles roast, they will release oils that may bother your nose and eyes if you’re not used to it. Open a window and turn on your exhaust fan.

Put the spices on a plate and let them cool. Once they are room temperature, add the peppercorns and grind everything in batches. Be careful of the fine powder that comes off the grinder when you take the lid off. You don’t want to breathe that in.

Mix the ground spices to make sure everything is uniformly distributed and store in an airtight container. It will be flavorful for about a month and not-too-bad the following month. See how easy it is?

This powder is great for your favorite chili, but you can also sprinkle it on cucumbers, jicama, or even mangos and pineapple like they do here in Mexico. Go nuts.

Recipe: Pasta in Pink Sauce

In my entry on our travels to Mazunte, Oaxaca, I mentioned a phenomenal Italian restaurant that we ate in. One of the dishes we had there was fettuccini in pink sauce. Neither of us had ever had pink sauce before and we loved it. It´s basically tomato sauce with cream. We’ve made it a couple of times at home now. It’s straightforward and as easy to do as most pastas. If you have your own preferred basic tomato sauce, use that and just add the cream. You’ll be amazed at how much the flavor changes. Here’s how we did it. (We were hungry though, and forgot to take a picture!)

This will serve four people as a main course and eight as a side dish.

Pasta in Pink Sauce

1 lb. dried pasta (fettuccini, spaghetti, linguini are good)

2 Tablespoons olive oil

½ cup diced onion

¼ cup diced carrot

¼ cup diced celery

1 bay leaf

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 teaspoons chopped, fresh oregano (or 1 teaspoon dried)

3 cups stewed tomatoes (use frozen or canned)

½ cup heavy cream

Salt and pepper to taste

½ cup chopped, fresh parsley

Shredded parmigiano (optional)

Put a pot of salted water on to boil for the pasta. As it heats up, chop the vegetables. Heat the oil over medium-high heat in a large skillet. Add the onion, carrots, celery, and bay leaf and cook until the vegetables begin to soften, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook, stirring constantly, for another 2 minutes, then add the oregano and cook for another minute until fragrant. Add the stewed tomatoes (If you are using the frozen version, you can put the frozen chunks right into the pan. Just break them up and keep everything moving.) Bring the sauce to a boil and simmer for about 10 minutes or until it begins to thicken. Taste and add salt and pepper. Stir in the cream, taste, and adjust salt again. You’ll be amazed how much that little bit of cream changes the flavor!

Cook the pasta until it is about 1 minute shy of being done. It should be a little too al dente. Take a scant cup of the pasta water and add it to your sauce (if the sauce is still pretty thin, you can just add ½ cup). Drain the pasta and then immediately add it to the sauce. Stir to combine and continue cooking until all of the excess liquid is absorbed and the pasta is perfectly al dente, about 2-3 minutes. Taste and adjust seasoning.

Note: This trick of adding pasta water to the sauce works great. The water is salty and starchy from cooking the pasta and adds a really nice flavor. It is also always important to finish cooking your pasta in the sauce so that the flavors all come together, which is why you take it out before it’s done.

Plate the pasta and top with parsley and parmigiano. Enjoy!

Kitchen Tip: Stewed Tomatoes

This one isn't so much a recipe as a kitchen tip; a way to process and store tomatoes when they come into season. I know this post is way too early for all of you farther north, but I'm going to post a couple recipes that use these tomatoes this week. What you get here is a homemade version of canned, stewed tomatoes. If you haven't had the chance to preserve your own fresh tomatoes, just use canned in my recipes.

There are many ways to can or preserve fresh tomatoes at home. This technique is a really easy way to not only take advantage of fresh tomatoes when you get them, but also have that slow-cooked tomato flavor at your disposal whenever you need it and in no time at all. My friend Joe always makes gallons of tomato sauce at the end of the summer, which is great, but requires a fair amount of work and leaves your house smelling very tomatoey for a week. What I describe here does not give you sauce, it gives you stewed tomatoes, which can then be made into a nice, thick marinara sauce, homemade ketchup, added to stews or soups, or anything else you can think of where cooked tomatoes are needed.

In the interest of keeping things simple, I don’t peel or seed the tomatoes before cooking them. You could do that if you wanted, but it would defeat the purpose of keeping things no fuss. These quantities are for an 8 cup crock pot.

Stewed Tomatoes

4 lbs ripe tomatoes washed and roughly chopped

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 one gallon zip-loc bags

Put the tomatoes and salt in the crock pot. Cook on high for 4-6 hours or on low for 8-10 hours. Once the time is up, blend the cooked tomatoes with a stick blender or upright blender. Let the tomatoes cool for about half an hour. You should have about 6 or 7 cups of stewed tomatoes. Ladle 3-4 cups into each zip-loc bag. The easiest way to do this is to place the bag in an upright container, like a yogurt container, ladle the tomatoes in, then squeeze the air out and close the bag while the container supports the liquid.

Clear a flat space in your freezer and lay the bags out flat. They will be frozen solid in a few hours. One bag is a good quantity for sauce for a pound of pasta. If you need to use less than a bag, just gently break off what you need. While the tomatoes will come out of the crock pot very watery, they will thicken up quickly on the stove. If you have a bigger crock pot, you can obviously stew more tomatoes at a time. Just fill the thing to the brim with chopped tomatoes!

Recipe: Arroz Verde

Arroz verde con plátanos fritos

I remember when my siblings and I were little, my mom used to do Spanish Rice every once in a while from a mix. We loved it at the time, then when I got older, I started to think it was just kind of tasteless. You know that red rice you get at “Mexican” restaurants in the US? It’s kind of mushy and has almost no flavor. I just always think, “Why did you bother putting this on my plate?”

This rice is the real deal. Its fluffy, slightly al dente texture is great, and the flavor is delicious, but understated enough to quickly become a comfort food. It’s also very versatile as far as serving goes. As a side dish, it can accompany just about anything, and you can also serve it as a course all its own or even make a complete meal out of it (as we just did!).

Popular ways to serve Mexican rice is with sliced bananas (fried or raw), a fried egg on top, or with a spoonful of beans. There are many possibilities.

Here is the recipe for our house favorite, green rice. At the end of the recipe you’ll find how to make red or white rice as well. Mexican rice is basically a pilaf with the rice grains being fried before steaming them. What varies with each color is what you mix into the cooking liquid.

I will be honest and let you know that you probably won’t get perfect rice the first few times you make this dish. It’s tricky to get the texture just right, but if you follow these steps, you should be good to go. Just don’t be dissuaded if your rice ends up a little over or underdone. Try, try again. It is well worth it. Once you get the hang of making Mexican rice, it will be a meal that you can prepare very quickly. It’s also cheap, delicious, and nutritious (especially if you opt for brown rice).

Arroz Verde

2 poblano chiles

2 Tablespoons chopped onion

1 clove garlic, peeled

¼ c loosely packed fresh epazote (You can skip the epazote, or use cilantro. Either way will change the flavor significantly.)

1 teaspoon salt

2 c stock or water (Veggie or chicken stock adds a nice flavor to the rice, especially if it is homemade, but you can get delicious rice just with water.)

2 Tablespoons veggie oil

1 c medium grain rice (White or brown is fine. See below for cooking difference for brown rice. Note that brown rice will give a very different texture and a nuttier flavor.)

½ c mixed vegetables (Diced carrot, corn, diced potato, and/or peas are most common. Carrots or potatoes should be cut to the size of a grain of corn.)

With a grill, broiler, griddle, or flame of a gas range, roast the poblanos until blackened evenly all over. Wrap them in a clean towel or place them in a paper bag to sweat for 15 minutes. This “sweating” will make them easier to peel. Remove the stems, seeds, and blackened skin from the chiles and place them in a blender.

These chiles are properly roasted!

To the blender add the onion, garlic, epazote, salt, and stock or water. Blend until everything is well liquefied and well combined.

In a medium sauce pan over medium high heat, warm the oil. When hot, add the rice. Fry for about 3-5 minutes, stirring constantly until the rice grains go from translucent to opaque and give off a nutty aroma (Brown rice will pop a little like popcorn!).

This rice is fried and ready for the liquid.

Add the liquid mixture all at once. It will spit and bubble furiously for about 5 seconds then calm down. Be careful. Add the mixed vegetables. Stir everything together.

Bring the rice to a boil, then cover and turn the heat down to low. Simmer the rice for about 20 minutes (If you are using brown rice, it will take about 50 minutes for the rice to cook completely.). Remove the lid, fluff the rice, scraping the bottom, and then put the lid back on and let it rest for about 10 minutes. Serve and enjoy!

For Arroz Rojo

3 roma tomatoes

¼ inch thick slice of white onion

1 clove garlic with the peel still on

1 teaspoon salt

Roast the tomatoes, onion and garlic clove on a grill, in a broiler, or a griddle on the stove. The tomatoes should be evenly blackened and the onion and garlic cooked until slightly blackened and soft. Peel the skin off the tomatoes and the garlic clove. Place in a blender with two cups of water or stock and follow the above instructions for Arroz Verde.

For Arroz Blanco

¼ inch thick slice of white onion

1 clove of garlic

1 teaspoon salt

3 whole, Serrano chiles

1 sprig epazote

Blend the onion, garlic, and salt with two cups of stock (stock in place of water is more important with white rice for flavor). Follow instructions for Arroz Verde. At the moment when you add the mixed veggies, add the sprig of epazote and the whole chiles.

Kitchen Tip: Storing leafy herbs

Aside from recipes, a big part of things going well in the kitchen is food processing and storage. I've learned a few things here and there from other people and trial and error, so when it comes up, I'll share!

So the last two recipes I've posted require just a bit of chopped, fresh parsley. The last thing I would ever want anyone to do is buy a whole bunch of parsley (or cilantro, or basil, or epazote, or whatever fresh herb), use a few tablespoons then let the rest go to waste. There is a really easy way to store any herb that you buy fresh on the stem.

First, wash it well, then shake off the excess water in a salad spinner or just by grabbing the bunch of stems and flinging the water off outside. Get a tall, wide container (an empty yogurt container works perfectly), fill it halfway with tap water, place your herbs in there as though they were flowers going in a vase, then put a plastic bag over the top. Put your "vase" in the fridge. If the herbs were nice and fresh when you bought them, they will keep like this in the fridge for up to three weeks (possibly, definitely two)! You just pull them out and take what you need when you need it. It's best if you change the water every few days.

I have also gotten this technique to work for leafy greens like spinach and chard. It keeps them from wilting.

Recipe: Pasta al ajillo con champiñones

Here in Puebla, it's pretty common to see pasta al ajillo in restaurants, often with an option to add shrimp. I've never seen it with mushrooms though, and one day, Maru and I thought it would be good, and we were right!

This is one of those everyday dishes that will be done in less than 30 minutes. The biggest time sucker is waiting for the water to boil, and you'll most likely finish making the "sauce" before the pasta is done, so you'll have time to throw a salad together if you want.

The name of the dish comes from the guajillo chile, which is a medium-hot dry, smooth-skinned chile. Any dry chile with smooth skin will work (chile de arbol, costeño, cascabel), although many are quite a bit hotter than the guajillo.

This mixture could also be a good base for a stir fry or for a nice piece of fish. This recipe will serve 2 as a main course or 4 as a side dish. It is easily doubled.

Pasta al ajillo con champiñones (Guajillo pasta with mushrooms)

½ lb. dry pasta (spaghetti works well)

3 Tablespoons olive oil

4 cloves garlic, minced (it’s a high garlic to pasta ratio on purpose)

1-2 guajillo chiles, sliced in ¼ inch pieces, seeds removed

1 ½ cups sliced fresh mushrooms

¼ cup chopped fresh parsley

Parmigiano cheese for garnish (optional)

Salt to taste (probably about a teaspoon in total)

Put salted water on to boil for the pasta. Cut up the garlic, chiles, and mushrooms. Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic and sautee for about 1 minute, then add the chiles. Cook, stirring constantly (you do not want burnt garlic!), until the chiles start to turn almost black (not burned, but starting to blacken), which should take about 3 minutes. Add the mushrooms with a dash of salt and cook until they are done, about 5 minutes.

Cook the pasta. Once the pasta is al dente, drain it, and add it to the pan with the mushroom mixture immediately. Stir everything together while keeping the pan over medium heat. Add the remaining tablespoon of oil and another dash of salt and stir until everything is evenly incorporated. Turn off the heat, then mix in the parsely.

Plate and top with grated parmigiano. Enjoy! The chile pieces are totally edible if you have a taste for them, and big enough to avoid if you don’t.

A note on spiciness:

As far as spiciness goes, this dish is probably “medium” or so. For most people, it will have a nice kick, but nothing that can’t be quenched with a cool drink. If you want it hotter, just add more chiles, or leave the seeds in. Obviously, you can add fewer chiles too, but another option would be to leave the chiles whole, sautee them with the garlic, then remove them before cooking the mushrooms. They will infuse the oil with some of their flavor, but very little spiciness. I would only recommend that route if you have almost 0 tolerance for spicy food. The flavor of the chiles is a really important part of this simple dish.