RECIPE #1: "Sin City" Breakfast Tacos
HEY! HEY! HEY! Sorry, I got so used to chanting and pumping my beer in the air last weekend, I'm not sure I'm back to reality yet. Watch this space for a full run-down on Heathen Crusade II, coming soon.
First, last weekend's playlist for car travel, in listening order: Bal-Sagoth's The Chthonic Chronicles, Skyforger's Pērkonkalve, Man Man's Six Demon Bag, Disillusion's Back to Times of Splendor, Goblin's Gamma, Fleurety's Black Snow, Bloc Party's A Weekend in the City, Týr's Ragnarok, Rotting Christ's Theogonia, Diablo Swing Orchestra's The Butcher's Ballroom, Iron & Wine's The Sea & the Rhythm, Aesop Rock's Fast Cars, Danger, Fire and Knives, Early Man's self-titled EP, Mr. Lif's Emergency Rations, the soundtrack comp Stereophonic Musical Listenings That Have Been Origin in Moving Film "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan", Joanna Newsom's Ys, Unseenmachine's Harmonically Carved Structures, Gwynbleidd's Amaranthine, Dredg's El Cielo and Islands' Return to the Sea. Yes, one of the upsides of traveling alone is that no one else has veto power while you subject the CD player to your whims.
Second, as this post's title proclaims, I would like to describe my experience with the first recipe of the year. Kyle suggested I try the recipe for puerco pibil that filmmaker extraordinaire Robert Rodriguez offers as one of the extras on the "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" DVD. That is indeed a delicious dish, and I will probably try it at some point. However, this time I went with Rodriguez's recipe on a DVD I actually own, the Special Edition of "Sin City." Here, he runs through a somewhat involved variety of breakfast tacos, a Rodriguez family favorite that was apparently popular on the set. The process for these involves concocting two different fillings, as well as fresh tortillas. At no point does Rodriguez provide a complete list of ingredients, and some of his stated measurements seem off, perhaps in an effort to get the audience to improvise. It's not too tough an endeavor, but even though I only made a half batch (I was the only one eating the finished tacos), it did take a fair amount of time to complete.
We start with the tortillas - a cup of flour, 1/4 tsp. salt, 1/4 tsp. baking powder and 1/8 cup butter combined in a bowl. Here, I met my first challenge. RR claims that when you mix this with your hands, it will loosely clump together, but the amount of butter seemed paltry compared to the powder. I ended up using about 1/4 cup of butter before the ingredients started sticking a bit. Then, you slowly add small amounts of warm water, mixing by hand as you go. This is where the ingredients really bind, as you're basically making paste. Little by little, you mix in some water and remove the clumps until the entire mess is a pasty ball, not too sticky or dry. You knead this for a couple of minutes until it's smooth and elastic, then break it into four or five golf ball-sized nuggets and place them under a warm, damp cloth for about ten to twenty minutes. So far, so good.
From here, you begin the first filling. 1/2 a potato, peeled and chopped, goes into some corn oil on medium heat. Flavor your papas fritas with salt and pepper, fry them until golden and put them on a paper towel to drain. This last bit was kind of tough, as I had eschewed buying tongs and had to make due with a big spoon. You want to preserve the oil, because next you use it to make migas. This is accomplished with a couple of pre-made corn tortillas, chopped up and fried in your potato oil so that they resemble makeshift Fritos. When they're crispy, the strips go onto their own paper towel to drain and get their own shower of salt and pepper.
According to Rodriguez's method, while the migas are frying, you're supposed to be heating a teflon pan or skillet over medium heat, as well as rolling out your flour balls into tortilla shape. This went smoothly, although without a proper pastry board I had to make due with a cutting board - not a problem, as the tortillas didn't get very big. The next step is to prepare your other taco filling, a veggie-based number you can make in the same pan in which you fried the potato and corn tortillas (after you drain the oil). He just says to put diced tomato, onion and jalapeño in the pan, so I was left on my own to determine the measurements. I used one whole pepper, about 1/3 of a medium-sized tomato and a little bit less of an onion, plus a little salt and pepper.
You're supposed to cook this in tandem with your flour tortillas. However, the veggie filling took more time to prepare than the filmmaker allows on the DVD. Each tortilla gets one last roll with the pin before you toss it into the skillet. You cook each side for a few seconds, by which time it should already have a little color, then press down as each side cooks for another one to one and a half minutes. When it bubbles up a bit, you remove it and place it under a towel to preserve the heat. This process requires constant attention, and cannot be done easily while chopping tomatoes. I suggest making the tortillas first - they stay warm pretty well under the towel.
Anyway, now that everything's basically cooked, you come to the final step of any worthy breakfast taco, the eggs. The DVD shows Rodriguez mixing his eggs with a splash of milk before dumping them in the pan, but as someone who has already mastered scrambled eggs, I skipped that step. As far as I know, you only put milk in scrambled eggs for texture and to mute the eggy flavor, whereas here, you're really just using the eggs to hold your other ingredients together. (This is just my preference - use milk if you like it.) Rodriguez makes two fillings by frying three eggs with the potatoes and migas, then another three eggs with the veggie mixture. Since I had halved the recipe, I used three eggs in total, and then took the ultimate liberty by using all the ingredients rather than splitting them up. The potatoes and migas went into the pan with the veggies, over which I cracked the eggs, making sure the yolks broke. When the eggs began to set, I shoved the cooked pieces to the side and let the runny stuff slide to the surface of the pan. Once your filling is cooked - whether you make separate batches or my preferred "kitchen sink" variety - you simply distribute it to your tortillas and chow down.
The first run-through of the "Sin City" Breakfast Tacos was a hit with the cook. The filling was delicious, and I'm glad I decided to combine all the ingredients in one, as the egg/potato/migas one sounds awfully starchy on its own. Speaking of which, the one drawback was that my tortillas came out somewhere between a pita and flatbread, and were a little too chewy for my taste. Rodriguez shows his tortillas as being thicker than what you typically think of, but I should have rolled mine a bit more - I think I let the batter stand too long while I chopped the veggies. Next time, I will be more attentive to the rolling process and only add the recommended amount of butter to the batter, as that also may have been a factor. Finally, the crispy migas turned soft when cooked with the eggs, so to help the texture, for the next batch I'll leave those alone until the tortillas are being filled.
First, last weekend's playlist for car travel, in listening order: Bal-Sagoth's The Chthonic Chronicles, Skyforger's Pērkonkalve, Man Man's Six Demon Bag, Disillusion's Back to Times of Splendor, Goblin's Gamma, Fleurety's Black Snow, Bloc Party's A Weekend in the City, Týr's Ragnarok, Rotting Christ's Theogonia, Diablo Swing Orchestra's The Butcher's Ballroom, Iron & Wine's The Sea & the Rhythm, Aesop Rock's Fast Cars, Danger, Fire and Knives, Early Man's self-titled EP, Mr. Lif's Emergency Rations, the soundtrack comp Stereophonic Musical Listenings That Have Been Origin in Moving Film "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan", Joanna Newsom's Ys, Unseenmachine's Harmonically Carved Structures, Gwynbleidd's Amaranthine, Dredg's El Cielo and Islands' Return to the Sea. Yes, one of the upsides of traveling alone is that no one else has veto power while you subject the CD player to your whims.Second, as this post's title proclaims, I would like to describe my experience with the first recipe of the year. Kyle suggested I try the recipe for puerco pibil that filmmaker extraordinaire Robert Rodriguez offers as one of the extras on the "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" DVD. That is indeed a delicious dish, and I will probably try it at some point. However, this time I went with Rodriguez's recipe on a DVD I actually own, the Special Edition of "Sin City." Here, he runs through a somewhat involved variety of breakfast tacos, a Rodriguez family favorite that was apparently popular on the set. The process for these involves concocting two different fillings, as well as fresh tortillas. At no point does Rodriguez provide a complete list of ingredients, and some of his stated measurements seem off, perhaps in an effort to get the audience to improvise. It's not too tough an endeavor, but even though I only made a half batch (I was the only one eating the finished tacos), it did take a fair amount of time to complete.
We start with the tortillas - a cup of flour, 1/4 tsp. salt, 1/4 tsp. baking powder and 1/8 cup butter combined in a bowl. Here, I met my first challenge. RR claims that when you mix this with your hands, it will loosely clump together, but the amount of butter seemed paltry compared to the powder. I ended up using about 1/4 cup of butter before the ingredients started sticking a bit. Then, you slowly add small amounts of warm water, mixing by hand as you go. This is where the ingredients really bind, as you're basically making paste. Little by little, you mix in some water and remove the clumps until the entire mess is a pasty ball, not too sticky or dry. You knead this for a couple of minutes until it's smooth and elastic, then break it into four or five golf ball-sized nuggets and place them under a warm, damp cloth for about ten to twenty minutes. So far, so good.From here, you begin the first filling. 1/2 a potato, peeled and chopped, goes into some corn oil on medium heat. Flavor your papas fritas with salt and pepper, fry them until golden and put them on a paper towel to drain. This last bit was kind of tough, as I had eschewed buying tongs and had to make due with a big spoon. You want to preserve the oil, because next you use it to make migas. This is accomplished with a couple of pre-made corn tortillas, chopped up and fried in your potato oil so that they resemble makeshift Fritos. When they're crispy, the strips go onto their own paper towel to drain and get their own shower of salt and pepper.
According to Rodriguez's method, while the migas are frying, you're supposed to be heating a teflon pan or skillet over medium heat, as well as rolling out your flour balls into tortilla shape. This went smoothly, although without a proper pastry board I had to make due with a cutting board - not a problem, as the tortillas didn't get very big. The next step is to prepare your other taco filling, a veggie-based number you can make in the same pan in which you fried the potato and corn tortillas (after you drain the oil). He just says to put diced tomato, onion and jalapeño in the pan, so I was left on my own to determine the measurements. I used one whole pepper, about 1/3 of a medium-sized tomato and a little bit less of an onion, plus a little salt and pepper.
You're supposed to cook this in tandem with your flour tortillas. However, the veggie filling took more time to prepare than the filmmaker allows on the DVD. Each tortilla gets one last roll with the pin before you toss it into the skillet. You cook each side for a few seconds, by which time it should already have a little color, then press down as each side cooks for another one to one and a half minutes. When it bubbles up a bit, you remove it and place it under a towel to preserve the heat. This process requires constant attention, and cannot be done easily while chopping tomatoes. I suggest making the tortillas first - they stay warm pretty well under the towel.Anyway, now that everything's basically cooked, you come to the final step of any worthy breakfast taco, the eggs. The DVD shows Rodriguez mixing his eggs with a splash of milk before dumping them in the pan, but as someone who has already mastered scrambled eggs, I skipped that step. As far as I know, you only put milk in scrambled eggs for texture and to mute the eggy flavor, whereas here, you're really just using the eggs to hold your other ingredients together. (This is just my preference - use milk if you like it.) Rodriguez makes two fillings by frying three eggs with the potatoes and migas, then another three eggs with the veggie mixture. Since I had halved the recipe, I used three eggs in total, and then took the ultimate liberty by using all the ingredients rather than splitting them up. The potatoes and migas went into the pan with the veggies, over which I cracked the eggs, making sure the yolks broke. When the eggs began to set, I shoved the cooked pieces to the side and let the runny stuff slide to the surface of the pan. Once your filling is cooked - whether you make separate batches or my preferred "kitchen sink" variety - you simply distribute it to your tortillas and chow down.
The first run-through of the "Sin City" Breakfast Tacos was a hit with the cook. The filling was delicious, and I'm glad I decided to combine all the ingredients in one, as the egg/potato/migas one sounds awfully starchy on its own. Speaking of which, the one drawback was that my tortillas came out somewhere between a pita and flatbread, and were a little too chewy for my taste. Rodriguez shows his tortillas as being thicker than what you typically think of, but I should have rolled mine a bit more - I think I let the batter stand too long while I chopped the veggies. Next time, I will be more attentive to the rolling process and only add the recommended amount of butter to the batter, as that also may have been a factor. Finally, the crispy migas turned soft when cooked with the eggs, so to help the texture, for the next batch I'll leave those alone until the tortillas are being filled.
posted by SoulReaper at 9:42 AM
1 Comments:
are you sure it's 1/8 cup butter? i'll have to check my recipe, but i definitely thought it was more.
that said, it took me months to perfect the tortilla, and now it is...dare i say...perfect.
to make the dough, i found the best way to crumble the butter is just stick your hands in it. mash up the butter in the flour with your fingers until they are tiny tiny nuggets. this is how you get the cornmeal consistency. and for the first couple times, add just a touch more baking powder than he says.
i did find that he said to add too much water, so use your discretion. the dough should be nice and pliable but not too wet. add more water than you think you should but not as much as he says.
then once you start to cook them, be sure to heat up the frying pan way beforehand. roll out the dough super thin. the tortillas will be small. then when you cook them they should bubble up a bit, just like he says! flip over after about 30 seconds and do the same on the other side.
hope that helps!
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