oz-mex

• 1.5 kilos Top Chuck Roast (I used an oyster blade roast) , cut into 1.5cm cubes
• vegetable oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1 anaheim pepper, chopped fine (1 Jalapeno and 1 green Bullhorn chilli)
• 3 large cloves garlic, minced
• 5 Tbsp Real Chilli Powder
• 1 Negro Modelo or dark Mexican beer (you want a malty dark beer)
• 3 serrano chiles, whole (sorry, sub 1 or 2 jalapenos, halved)
• 1 tsp oregano (Mexican oregano if you have it)
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 small can diced Hatch green chiles, drained (3 diced fresh jalapenos, seeds removed)
• 1 can beef broth
• 1 can tomato sauce (unflavored)
• 1/3 – 1/2 cup masa harina (corn flour)

I found a oyster blade roast at Glenmore Meats, but Courtney uses chuck and that worked beautifully.  At any rate, this is a flavorful cut that’s not too lean, and good for chili meat.  We’re going to cube it, cutting out as much fat and well, anything that’s not meat.

Heat some of the oil in heavy dutch oven (cast iron rocks!), brown cubed meat, drain fat and return to stove on low heat.  I actually do this in small batches so that the accumulated liquid doesn’t braise the meat and keep it from browning.  I pour off the liquid so the meat browns quickly.

Heat oil in heavy skillet, sautee onions and anaheim (or whatever) pepper 5 minutes, add garlic and sautee 1 minute more.  Add to meat in dutch oven.

Stir tomato sauce into the meat mixture in the dutch oven, bring heat up to medium low. Add 2 tsp oregano (mexican oregano if you have it) and 2 tsp cumin to meat mixture. Add green chiles (or whatever you have that’s not a sweet capsicum) to meat mixture.

Put the skillet back on stove.  Pour beer into the skillet, bring heat up to medium. Add 3 whole serranos (or whatever) and the chilli powder to beer.  Stir occasionally and bring slowly to boil.

Stir beef broth into meat mixture.  Now stir boiled beer/chili liquid to meat mixture and let cook for a while.  Add masa and thicken to taste. bring chili to boil.

Yummy.

Some people call them Breakfast Burritos.

To me, a Burrito is something made in a large flour tortilla that’s at last 9 or 10 inches (25-30cm) across, and rolled up into something quite thick.  It can be hand-held, but in the Tex-Mex restaurant where I ran the night crew in the early 90’s, it was served on a plate with sauce and melted cheese on top.  (Well, everything in that restaurant was served with sauce and melted cheese on top, so that’s not saying much).

A taco can be made in a corn (crispy or soft) or flour tortilla, and these are usually around 6 inches (15 cm).  If I have my druthers, I’ll take my tacos in freshly-made corn tortillas, ones that have never seen the inside of a plastic bag.  But I’d say that Breakfast Tacos are almost always, always flour tortillas.

It seems that Breakfast Tacos As An Institution may be more of an Austin thing than I thought.  A minimal amount of googling brought up more Austin-Breakfast Taco connections than I expected.

If you haven’ t discovered filmmaker Robert Rodriguez’s 10 Minute Cooking School extras on DVDs of his movies, you need to.  Check YouTube for Sin City Breakfast Tacos.  Mmmmm.

So what would happen is that at work, someone would bring in 3 or 4 white paper bags full of breakfast tacos wrapped in foodservice foil.  The cheese would have melted, and the warmth was still there, but starting to dissipate, and you’d pry them open and pour little containers of salsa or pico de gallo on them and then wrap them up again.

The basic ingredients were

• Potato
• Cheese
• Egg
• Refried Bean
• Sausage
• Bacon
• Migas
• Chorizo
• Avocado

In some mixture.  But almost never more than 2 or 3 ingredients, and the third ingredient, if present, had to be cheese.

The most popular one was always potato-egg-cheese.

Potato Egg & Cheese Breakfast Tacos

1 small potato, cut into 1cm cubes (I never peel them)
1/2 T oil
3 eggs
grated cheddar (and/or Monterey Jack, not easy to find in Oz)
salt, pepper
some flour tortillas

1. Prep the potato.  If I have time I’ll boil the potato cubes just until they start to get tender, then drain and finish in the skillet.  If I’m lazy I’ll just go straight to the skillet.
2. Cook the potato cubes in a skillet, over medium heat, yes, in the oil.  Sprinkle salt and pepper to taste. You don’t really want to get them brown and/or crispy, just done almost like a chip (french fry).  Remove from the skillet.
3. Crack the eggs into the skillet and break the yolks (if you’re industrious you can blend the eggs in a bowl with a fork and then put in the skillet, but end result is close enough not to matter.  Once the eggs start solidifying, (but not yet hard) toss potato in.  Maybe some salt.  Maybe not.
4. When the egg is done to your liking, ladle into freshly warmed flour tortillas and sprinkle some cheese on.
5. You can eat right away, but if you roll it up in some foil for a little bit it will transform into something quite magical.

Egg & Chorizo Breakfast Tacos

3 Eggs
1/3 cup raw chorizo
Flour tortillas

1. Cook the chorizo over medium heat until crumbly and done, slightly browned. Remove from skillet.
2. Drop the eggs in and do just like in the recipe above.  Add the cooked chorizo.
3. Put in Tortillas, eat.

Bean & Cheese Breakfast Tacos

(I’ll write this one up once I write up the refried bean recipe)

In Australian butcher cases there is a cured meat sausage called chorizo, but sources tell me that its chorizo in the Portuguese style.

In Texas breakfast tacos, chorizo is a spicy, so chili-laden that it’s brick red, uncured fine mince.  Unmistakable for any other meat. It’s usually greasy as hell, too, but this recipe is not.

This recipe is from Robb Walsh’s The Tex-Mex Cookbook (and before that comes from a recipe published in the 70’s by El Chico Restaurants) with some small changes by me that take the recipe a little closer to what you’d get in an Austin taco stand.

It’s really really fast to make, especially if you just grab some pork mince from the butcher instead of cutting & grinding your own.  Robb recommends getting fatty boneless pork chops, cut into pieces, instead of mince, if you’re asking.

El Chico’s Chorizo +

I just dump everything into the food processor and process until its mixed well.  Then into the skillet or freezer.

Makes 1 1/4 cups

.5 K pork mince
4 tsp Real Chili Powder (or whatever you have labelled “chili/chilli powder”)
6 tsp spicy paprika
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp ground cumin
4 T red wine vinegar
2 T vegetable oil
1/2 onion, chopped into quarters – you want about a half-cup in volume as onion size is relative.

If you’re feeling crazy you can dial up the chili powder or add cayenne to taste.

For Roasting:
2-3 lbs Roma tomatoes
6-12 fresh jalapeno peppers
2 bunches garlic

Other Ingredients
Salt, to taste

Roma tomatoes work best for this recipe. Cut and seeded, they have much more body and density than regular tomatoes. Their flat sides lend themselves to even cooking. You can use regular tomatoes, but they will not blacken as nicely and they may wilt to unmanageability on the grill.

Wash and rinse the veggies well, as always.

Cut and seed the tomatoes into quarters.

Wrap each bunch of garlic in a sheet of foil, trying to keep a pretty even covering of foil all around rather than a thin covering on one side and a big wad of foil on the other. Once again, even cooking is our goal.

Fire up the grill. OK, so I already know that those of you who don’t find cooking to be a grand adventure are shaking your heads. Too long, too much work! Well, that’s why it’s so good!

I tried to make this stuff in the oven broiler, but it just paled in comparison to the flavor you get on the grill.

When the coals are all going gray and putting out good heat, plop your jalapenos and garlic on the grill.

You’re shooting for blackened skin, which will make it easy to peel, and flesh that’s cooked, but not burnt. The pepper flesh is quite moist and won’t burn easily, so you can let it get pretty black on the outside, but be careful, because you can burn them if you leave them on too long. If your tongs can feel the flesh starting to wilt under the blackened skin, they’ve probably been in too long. I like to pull them out while they’re still firm.

You want them black ALL over, any green spots left will be hard to peel.

Pull the jalapenos off and drop them in a ziploc bag to steam. The garlic is typically not done yet so I leave it on while I cook the tomatoes too, usually on a cooler side of the grill, but still getting constant heat.

Drop the tomato slices in flesh side down first. This side can take a fair amount of cooking. Keep an eye on them. You actually want these to get good and blackened as well.

Note: keep rolling the garlic around on the grill so that all sides get evenly exposed to heat. I prop them up against the sides of the grill to help keep it from falling over.

You only want to flip the tomatoes once, so you want this side to get good and black before you flip. Once you flip, the tomato is partially cooked and has lost some firmness, so having the the skin side down for the final bit of cooking will help the peices keep their shape and keep them from sticking to the grill.

This is what you’re looking for: seriously. Regular tomatoes won’t blacken like this, so do your best if that’s what you’re using. The trick is to char them and pull them off before the tomato flesh completely breaks down and dribbles down through the grill into your charcoal.

When they’re done, that is pretty much blackened all over but just as they start getting really limp and losing their shape, toss ’em in a bowl. Grab the garlic too.

Now you have your bag of jalapenos, your roasted garlic, and your roasted tomatoes.

Peel the jalapenos under running water, and then halve and seed them, getting as much of the membrane as you can.

Now, toss everybody into the food processor.

I’m a pretty much “to taste” cook, so I can’t really tell you what the ration of tomatoes to garlic to peppers is, I do it differently every time. Depends on the strength and freshness of everything. I tend to start conservatively, and then add more peppers and garlic slowly so I don’t overdo it.

This is when you add the salt. To taste.

Chop it up so it’s chunky, no need to puree it.

Mmmmm.