Monday, October 6, 2008

Tacos Huevos Rancheros

I've been craving some Mexican food recently, so decided to cook something up. Completely different style of flavors from what I experienced during my honeymoon, but still hella tasty nonetheless. I opened up my reference book for Mexican cooking: Rick Bayless's Mexican Kitchen for some inspiration. Below is what I made - a take on Huevos Rancheros which is usually not served directly in a tortilla shell, but I figure why the f not.

Ingredients
4 Ripe Tomatoes - cut a small x on top to help remove the peel later
3-4 chipotle chiles (canned)
4 cloves garlic
4 eggs
cilantro, leaves only
white onion diced
avocado diced
black beans (canned, but to amp the flavors up saute onions, garlic, add the drained beans, and add pork stock to simmer)
4 tortillas warmed (either steamed or microwaved for 30 seconds)
salt/pepper

1) Place tomatoes in a tray under a broiler. Once blackened on the top, flip the tomatoes over and add garlic cloves under the broiler (maybe 10 minutes?). Once the tomato is blackened on the other side remove add to a blender and cover (don't blend yet). Remove garlic cloves when blackened.
2) Once the tomatoes and the garlic cools, peel the tomato skin and remove the garlic peels. Add the chipotle chiles and blend till smooth. Taste and season with salt and pepper. Should be smokey, sweet, and slightly spicy.
3) Add the chipotle salsa to a saute pan and cook for 5 minutes over medium heat. This will thicken to an almost thick tomato sauce consistency.
4) Make a well in the salsa and drop an egg in. Drop 4 total eggs in making sure there's enough space for the eggs to poach in. The eggs should not really touch each other. Salt and pepper each egg, cover the saute pan and lower the heat to a simmer. Saw this technique from America's Test Kitchen and it worked out perfectly.
5) Once the egg fully sets (maybe 3-4 minutes), remove from the heat. The egg centers will be completely runny.
6) To serve, add eggs being careful not to break the yolk, salsa, black beans, onion, avocado, and cilantro to the taco. The combo of flavors and textures are so on. Creamy black beans and avocado, smokey spicy salsa, crispy sweet white onions, but the runny egg yolk really makes this dish. For the second taco, the residual heat in the pan made the egg yolk firm up which created a totally different style taco. Served with some rice pilaf and a side of collard greens, this was a healthy and insanely delicious meal. The best was eating the rice, beans, and chipotle salsa together. Buen Provecho!

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