Better Living Through Breakfast Tacos

I am a Texan, bred, born and raised. Our family dates back for generations in the U.S. to the American Revolution. Our ancestors not only fought in the War for Independence from England, we also had at least one relative who fought in the War for Texas Independence during 1835-1836. My Mom used to regale us with the stories from her mom about how Grandpa Gilbert fought with General Sam Houston against General Santa Anna, commander of the Mexican army in the infamous 18 minute Battle of San Jacinto, the battle that ended the war and resulted in Texas independence from Mexico.

The Battle of San Jacinto took place just 20 miles due east, along what is now Interstate-10 and present-day, downtown Houston, in San Jacinto. This famous battle resulted in the surrender of the Mexican forces, capture of their general and the creation of the Republic of Texas, never recognized by our Mexican friends. It wasn’t until Texas became a state, about 9 years later, that we officially became Texans.

We lived this lore as children and often took road trips to see the giant monument. Erected at the turn of the 20th Century, it memorialized the brave men who fought in the battle. The San Jacinto Monument stands 15 feet taller than the Washington Monument, for which it was modeled. To a child, it inspires dreams and fantasies of life during that time. Seeing Grandpa Gilbert’s name in writing on the monument only served to fuel the fanciful dreams of seeing General Sam Houston under the famous oak tree, just after battle, accepting the surrender of Santa Anna and our grandfather standing right beside the renowned leader…of course that did not happen. Our grandfather was not standing beside Sam Houston.

I also remember the respect and admiration my dad and mom had for the Mexican people. I believe they honored them, in part, because of a shared belief in the ideal that is the sanctity of family (not that our family wasn’t as dysfunctional and torn as the next, cuz we’ve certainly had our issues). But they shared a common, strong commitment to family.

Dad worked with many Mexican workers in the construction business of a young Houston and I still remember the day he came home raving about this delicious breakfast one of the men shared with him. He called them tacos and they were made with egg, potato and salsa. He described them as one of the best breakfasts he’d ever tasted.

It wasn’t until my college years in Austin, however, that I really became indoctrinated into the “way and philosophy” that is the Breakfast Taco. A sandwich that isn’t a sandwich, an icon of TexMex culinary excellence, the breakfast taco could just be the perfect food. There are so many combinations: potato and egg, bean and egg, meat and egg, bacon and egg – the list continues for miles. It is cheap. It is filling. It is fast food cooked from slow ingredients. It is comfort food for the soul of every Texan, worldwide.

Blue Zebra Breakfast Tacos
Yield 4 Tacos (6-7” tortillas)

For breakfast tacos:

4 Eggs
1 Tbsp Water
½ - 1 Tbsp Olive oil, butter, or bacon grease
2 oz Leftover Meat (I use bacon, sausage, leftover brisket or pulled pork)
¼ Cup Cheddar or Monterey Jack Cheese (optional)
¼ Cup Salsa* (optional)
4 Flour Tortillas* (6-7” Diameter)
Salt and Pepper to taste
Cilantro

For cottage fries:
4 Baby New Potatoes (1-1/2” diameter)
1/8 tsp Garlic Powder
1/8 tsp Cumin Powder
1 Pinch Coriander Powder
1/8 tsp Paprika (smoked paprika is awesome in this)
Salt and Pepper to taste
Olive oil

For sautéed veggies:
½ Zucchini, cut in ½” pieces
½ Yellow Squash, cut in ½” pieces
¼ Onion, coarsely chopped
4 Mushrooms, sliced
½ Tomato, small, seeded, ¾” dice
1 Clove Garlic, sliced
Salt and Pepper to taste
Olive oil

For tacos:
Crack eggs into bowl and add water. Using a fork or wire whisk, vigorously beat the eggs until the yolks and whites are well-mixed and the eggs are frothy. Using water, keeps the eggs tender. Milk or cream can actually make them tough. It’s also cheaper to use water, right?

Prep and assemble all of the elements for the tacos: shred the meat, grate the cheese, make the salsa (or open a jar), separate a few cilantro leaves if you have them. These fillings can be as sumptuous as you want or as bare-bones and empty cupboard as necessary. This is a poor man’s breakfast but kings of all nations love them, too! Have the potatoes cook and the veggies sautéed and waiting.

Heat a skillet to medium heat. Add about a tablespoon of oil. Do not use margarine here (as much because of transfats as because the water in the margarine will separate and cause problems with sticking).

When the oil is heated, give the eggs a final stir and pour into pan. Slowly move the eggs around, scraping the bottom of the pan, forming curds. For those who are unfamiliar, this is called scrambling eggs.

Just before done, remove eggs from heat and finish stirring. Salt and pepper the scrambled eggs. Eggs should be moist and fluffy, they will continue to cook for the next few minutes. Remove to a plate.

Add flour tortillas to the pan and cook one at a time, heating briefly on both sides. (Option: place 4 tortillas on a plate, cover with plastic wrap and nuke in a microwave for about 30 seconds to heat them through).

Assemble your tacos and enjoy! Add salsa, avocado, cilantro, lime or other condiments.

For Potatoes:
Wash and cut potatoes in quarters and then in half (you will have 8 pieces per potato). Don’t bother drying the potatoes because the moisture will help keep them plump while cooking in the microwave. Place on microwave safe plate. Cover with 2 layers of wet microwave safe paper towels. Nuke for about 3 minutes or until potatoes are fork tender.

Heat skillet to high heat and add oil. When oil is hot, remove paper and pour potatoes into pan. Do NOT stir them!

Sprinkle the tops of the potatoes with seasonings. Again, do not stir the potatoes around. Let them sit for about 2-3 minutes before stirring to rearrange them. This will allow them to brown on the first side. You are trying to get them crispy and brown outside and keep them moist and creamy inside. Microwaving until done is the secret to getting potatoes that are browned on the outside and cooked through on the inside!

Potatoes will take about 6-7 minutes to fully brown on all sides. Remove potatoes and reserve for tacos. Serve them either on the side or as part of a potato and egg taco. Amazingly awesome!

For Sautéed Veggies:
Wash and dry veggies and split squash in half lengthwise. Cut into ½ inch pieces. Prepare all other veggies as noted in above recipe. Heat skillet to high heat. Add oil and heat through.

Add veggies, except for tomatoes, and seasonings and saute over high heat until “just tender” or al dente, about 8-10 minutes. Don’t over stir. You want them to be browned in places. In the last 2 minutes of cooking, add tomatoes. Taste and adjust seasoning. Remove from pan and reserve for tacos. Serve veggies either on the side or as part of a veggie version of breakfast tacos. So great!

Blue Zebra NOTE:
*Flour tortillas and salsa are available at most grocery stores. They will “do” in a pinch and works as a quick solution for the time-conscious. But for the very best result, making these elements from scratch is always going to make a better taco. There is a night and day difference.

The recipes for flour tortillas and salsa choices will be available soon. I will post them under the recipe section as soon as we solve the recipe database dilemma, so please have patience with us! :D

Breakfast tacos, as previously stated, can have many fillings. One of the favorite ways to use leftover meat in our house is to use a couple of ounces in our breakfast tacos, about ½ ounce per taco. I do not warm the meat because it imparts a re-warmed taste. Instead, I let the heat from the warm tortillas and hot scrambled eggs warm the meat up to temp.

But meat isn’t essential to making great breakfast tacos. Two of my favorite BTs are potato and egg or bean and egg made with pinto beans, mashed and refried a bit, prior to assembling. I also use the veggie saute, shown above, with great success. Veggie BTs are so satisfying you don’t even recognize the lack of meat.

The humble breakfast taco is nourishing, and will “stick to your bones” as my grandmother, WaWa, used to say about food that carried a person through the day. The breakfast pictured above is a HUGE serving for most and only costs about $1.10 to make per plate, including 2 cups of coffee with cream. It’s simply another illustration how the egg is man’s best friend for people on a budget. So take my advice, make breakfast tacos at any time of the day. Better living through breakfast tacos! Read more->

Mulligan Stew For Me, Please

Can you believe this individual breakfast serving, as large as it is, included 2 eggs, Mulligan Stew, a homemade English muffin, a huge serving of grits with real, unsalted butter and coffee and only cost $1.00 to make? It's true!

Eggs as most people know are an excellent way to stretch a food budget. Why do you think coffee houses are so successful? Everyone seems to adore breakfasts no matter the time of day, served as an eye-opener in the morning or late at night after a long evening spent dancing and partying with friends. It's a perfect way to start or end the day! With the mark-ups on breakfasts what they are, the coffee houses are making a fortune cooking it for us! Well, ok, maybe not a fortune but they are turning a tidy profit.

But ask any mom from circa 1950 and she will tell you that breakfast for dinner was one of the savvy ways to stretch a dollar when money was tight, especially towards the end of your pay period or month! I remember eating breakfast for dinner at least one time every week and sometimes more often! Figure that today a dozen eggs can cost as little as $0.79 cents/dozen. The fresh, brown farm eggs I use only cost me $1.40/doz at my farm stand, just $0.12 each! They pack a wallop of superior protein per egg and work great in so many dishes.

Mulligan Stew is a great dish to serve with or without eggs. The combinations of these ingredients and the cooking method may very well have other names in different states or even countries, but in my family it was called Mulligan Stew and it originated during the Great Depression which occurred after the big stock market crash in 1929. My mom's mom, we called her Gay, created this as a way to feed her growing family, having very meager food and money at her command.

The original recipe I am going to share with you stretched to serve 6 people: a mom, a dad and 4 growing children (3 girls and 1 hungry boy). She fed these 6 people on 3 strips of bacon, an onion and a can of tomatoes or tomato sauce (whichever she happened to have in her empty pantry).

Also, the original dish was served over toasted slices of your basic five cent loaf of sandwich bread and each person received two slices of toast with a bit of the Mulligan Stew topping the toast. No eggs were served. No grits graced the table. It was coffee (if they had enough money for it) or plain ole' water. I asked my mom how on earth this recipe fed 6 people and she replied, "The momma and the papa didn't get much to eat."

We had 5 kids in our family and until she died, our grandmother(Dad's mom, WaWa) lived with us, making it 8 people in a tiny cracker box house that kinda resembled the houses being built in the movie "It's a Wonderful Life", the typical 1950s style ranch houses on standard little lots. It's funny, but I remembered our house feeling big and the yard being "enormous" lol. To drive by it today, it is so small. I still don't see how we all lived so well within its comforting walls.

I digress, though. My mom used to make this recipe for us as children. It too was a way to make her budget stretch further than it had any right to stretch. I want to remember seeing this dish at the end of every month...but reality was that we probably saw it throughout the month! She never got tired of eating it. To this day, Mom still loves Mulligan Stew. Imagine feeding 5 children on about 3-4 slices of bacon, 10 slices of bread and a can of tomatoes!

Wow! It's so easy to forget how blessed we are and that right now, today, despite the economic prosperity most of us enjoy, there are people who are making "dishrag soup" out there, trying to feed their babies on a nickel or less per day. Not to be maudlin, I just find that it helps to keep things in perspective and keeps me counting my blessings and thanking God instead of whining about what I want and don't have...

So back to Mulligan Stew. I was feeling nostalgic and thought I would go ahead and reveal the dish that inspired the name for my blog. This is a wonderful dish, penny-wise or not. It can appear very basic and easy or it can take on an elegant slant, depending on how it's served and with what accompaniments. To me it embodies the flavors of the South. Forget about pouring off the fat, here. This dish was meant to let the fat help assuage hunger signals by giving a rich mouth feel and a satisfied tummy. It isn't greasy, believe me!

I hope you will try this recipe. It is so quick and easy to make and warms you up all over. It's basic comfort food! And for those of you who have never experienced Southern grits! They are a perfect butter delivery system.

Mulligan Stew
Serves 4 or 6 (in a pinch!)

3 Strips Bacon, cut up, raw
1 Large Onion, chopped coarsely
1 15-1/2 oz Can Tomato Sauce or
Chopped Tomatoes (I used chopped), with juice
1/4 - 1/2 tsp Granulated Garlic Powder, or
2-3 cloves Fresh Garlic, crushed -
(It depends on how garlicky you like it!!!)
1/2 can Water, measured in tomato can to rinse it out
Salt and Pepper to taste

Method:
Sautee the bacon on medium low until about 3/4 of the way done. You want to "sweat" out and render the fat, so you are looking for a slow cooking here in order to keep as much of the liquid in the pan as possible. Add chopped onion to bacon and grease in the pan and continue to saute over medium low until the onion is soft and translucent. You will actually cook the onion beyond the translucent stage and will cook it until the edges start to brown and caramelize. Add the can of tomato product with it's juices, along with the 1/2 can of water. Add the garlic and salt and pepper. Allow Mulligan Stew to simmer over medium to medium low heat until the sauce has thickened a bit, about 20-30 minutes. You still want it a bit on the soupy side, so that it will "go further" and feed more people! Taste at the end of cooking and adjust seasoning if necessary. Serve hot off of the stove!

Blue Zebra NOTE:
I like to serve this dish plain as it was originally intended to be served, over toast. But it makes an excellent brunch or breakfast dish (or dinner!) when served with eggs. Fried or poached, both preps work well from a taste perspective. It's also easy to poach the eggs right on top of the stew in the same saute pan. Simply crack your eggs on top of the stew (I like to make a little "egg indention" for each egg) and cover with the lid to the pan. Poach for 3-5 minutes or until whites are set and yolks are still lovely and runny. So rich! You'd forget you were penny-pinching with this recipe! Scoop the poached egg and stew out together and serve on top of toast or toasted English muffins as I did today.

For a low carb and more upscale alternative, serve the stew and poached egg over an artichoke bottom or a sauteed Portobello mushroom cap or on top of a "raft" of asparagus spears instead of the toast or muffin. Serve toast points on the side if you have the carbs to spare. Mmmmmm!

Mulligan Stew works great as a quick sauce for pasta or as a tomato based sauce over chicken, pork or fish or seafood (scallops, shrimp and crawdaddys are fabo-tastic). If you are going to use it as a sauce for meat or fish, simply season your meat/seafood with salt, pepper and granulated garlic powder (not garlic salt!!) and sear in a pan with a bit of oil or butter until it's brown on the outside but still raw inside. Transfer to the Mulligan Stew pan and let it simmer with the lid on for about 30 minutes or until the meat is done and the sauce is thickened.

Blue Zebra Cooking Technique Tip: Saute, Sear, Sweat
Sauteing, searing and sweating are three basic techniques of cooking. Doing each of these properly results in completely different taste elements to the same ingredient! Learn how to do each one well and the technique can be extended "laterally" - which means you can apply it to any number of different ingredients, preparation steps and recipes. It opens a whole new arena and repertoire of foods you can cook!

A "saute" generally tends to use a higher heat and a shorter period of time on the heat. The object is to let it cook undisturbed so that the side of the ingredient exposed to the pan surface will sear and get a caramelized crust. The purpose for this is because this browning builds flavor and complexity. The browning consists of sugar molecules and proteins actually caramelizing from the heat. Often, cooks look for the browned residue left in the bottom of most non-stick pans after the browning has been completed. This is called "the fond" and is particularly wonderful if the heat is moderated during sauteing so that you promote browning but avoid burning. The fond is usually deglazed, or released from the pan bottom by the use of a liquid addition and gentle scraping with a spatula. Once released, the liquid and browned bits are allowed to reduce and then seasoned and used as pan gravy or juice. With sauteing, you are generally looking for the food to be cooked and ready for plating.

A "sear" is done like a saute only much, much shorter time and maybe even a little higher heat. The objective of a sear is to caramelize the outside surface layers of an ingredient without cooking it throughout. With a sear, you want to seal the outter surface in order to protect the moisture inside of the ingredient. It effectively "seals" the substance, providing you don't pierce the seared surface. Usually 1-3 minutes per side, depending on the thickness of the ingredient is all that would be required to sear something over high heat in a heavy saute pan. The thicker and heavier a pan, the less likely something is to burn while searing and generally, the heat will be more even. Meats or fish and some shellfish are prime examples of items that would be seared in a pan prior to adding to a sauce or liquid to finish cooking or prior to putting into an oven to finish roasting.

A "sweat" is done at a lower temperature from a saute. The purpose of this technique is to soften the ingredients and break down the cell walls, releasing the sugars within the product but doing it without any browning. It not only keeps a sauce lighter in color, since there is no caramelization but there is also a more delicate flavor associated with this technique. You will usually see this technique applied most frequently with ingredients such as onions and garlic or mirapoix, a French word denoting the "French Trinity" or combination of onions, celery and carrots in varying degrees of "chop". The sweat is usually a first step in building complex flavors for soups, stews, braises and sauces of many types. You would rarely sweat a meat or protein, for example. Read more->