In past issues I tackled dinner, lunch and dessert. That meant that there was only one area I had not explored — breakfast.
This meal of the day is as diverse as any other with a variety of recipes to choose from. What typically stands out the most is breakfast that’s served after a big event (like a wedding or a quinceanera) after a holiday (like Christmas or New Year’s), and on Sundays.
The majority of Mexico is Roman Catholic. The 2010 Census, coducted by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography, calculated that 82.7 percent of the Mexican population is Roman Catholic, and 9.7 percent was part of another denomination of Christianity. That means the influence of the Roman Catholic Church is felt in many aspects of daily life. Sundays are one of these aspects.
A typical Sunday in my childhood was waking up to go to mass too early for my liking. However, this also consisted of a more elaborate breakfast than any during the week.
An example of this is menudo: a soup made with beef stomach in clear broth or a chili base broth — typically accompanied by lime, chopped onions, chopped cilantro, crushed oregano, crushes red chili peppers and tortillas.
I remember seeing my grandmother leave with pot in hand to go buy menudo when we would eat at her house. The process of making menudo is laborious and can take between four and seven hours. My grandmother would sometimes make menudo from scratch, but more often than not she would head down to buy some.
In other words, breakfast as a family has always been a very elaborate and social part of life that consists of a pretty substantial dish.
Opting for something less labor intensive than the strenuous cooking process menudo takes, I opted for another comfort breakfast food: chilaquiles.
I went to the grocery store and picked up some tortillas, some eggs, a bag of pinto beans, a container of sour cream, some feta cheese, one onion, two tomatoes, one jalapeno pepper and a green pepper.
While my phone insisted on inviting a few of my dear friends over for “chicks aquifers” (Just like Pepperdine insists the SAC is a building and not a trailer), I invited them over for a Mexican breakfast for dinner of chilaquiles and eggs.
I began the cooking process by putting two tomatoes and two peppers in water to boil. This would act as the sauce base that I would use later. While that was going on, I also put some beans to cook. Beans take a long time to prepare, so start early with these. I made the mistake of not doing so.
Before putting the beans in water to boil, they need to be cleaned. Often times, little rocks or bad beans sneak in the packets, and you don’t want to bite into these. After going through them, they need to be put in water on a high flame and covered. Once the water starts to boil, the fire needs to be turned down and some salt can be added. I kept the beans over the stove until they changed texture. To check if they needed more salt, I simply tasted them.
While the beans were cooking, I began to work on everything else. To make the chilaquiles you need to cut tortillas into small to medium sized triangles. How many tortillas you cut depends on how many chilaquiles you want. Once that was done, I put a pan on the stove with some corn oil. After that warmed up, I put the tortillas in and waited for them to turn golden brown. Essentially, I made chips.
When you take them out of the pan, be sure to put them on a paper towel so that it absorbs the excess oil.
Next, I took the tomatoes and the peppers that I had previously set to boil, and I threw them in the blender. I then took some canned chili sauce and put it in a pan to boil. Once that started boiling, I added the sauce that was in the blender. This is all stirred together until it all boils. Once it starts boiling, lower the flame and start adding the chips. With the sauce, the chips will regain a soft texture. I turned off the flame once the chips had turned red and had absorbed all the sauce.
For the condiments, I chopped some onion, and put some feta cheese and sour cream in bowls. The sour cream and the cheese help accentuate and ease the spiciness of the chilaquiles.
Fried eggs are typically served with chilaquiles. However, I left this up to my dear guests if they preferred their eggs fried, scrambled, soft-boiled or raw. They all opted for fried.
Chilaquiles, and other spicy breakfast foods, are said to cure hangovers. So if nothing else, let a hangover be your motivation to try this out.
