the morning after
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 2:40AM | Seeley deBorn Migas is apparently one hell of a hang over food. It's quite handy too that it's made from a bunch of leftovers.
It apparently originated in Austin, Texas, but has spread to the surrounding area. And it's so fabulous a meal that I've decided to spread it even further. And while it is a handy morning after breakfast, it's also good to have for dinner before the drinks begin.
Migas typically starts with day-old tortillas, chopped and fried in oil, but if you don't have fresh tortillas, or if you're really not in the mood to deal with the extra step, tortilla chips (particularly the broken up ones in the bottom of the bag) will work just fine. Just as leftover pico de gallo will work in place of spending time chopping onions and jalapenos first thing in the morning.
Holy hell, I am lazy.
Sometimes I even surprise myself.
Migas
What You Need
- 2-3 fresh corn tortillas
- 2 tbsp peanut oil (or some other oil with a high smoke point)
OR
- 1/2 c broken pieces of tortilla chips
-
- 1/2 jalapeno
- 1/4 onion
- 1/2 tomato
- cilantro
OR
- about 1/2 c of pico de gallo
-
- 4 eggs
- 1/4 c milk or cream
- bacon, ham or sausage
- 1/2 c cheddar or monteray jack cheese
- more cilantro if you have it
What you Gotta Do
If you're feeling up to the extra step, and have fresh tortillas handy, chop them into pieces. Shape isn't that big a deal, but they should be relatively small. Bite sized.
In a shallow pan over medium high, heat the oil until is starts to shimmer, then sprinkle in the tortillas. Fry them until they're golden then fish them out of the oil and set them on some paper towels while you do more stuff.
If you're using fresh veggies, now's the time to chop them. Diced fairly small. If you've got pico de gallo (or salsa, in a pinch) leftover from last night's festiviites, you can hold onto it for now.
Drain most of the oil from the pan. Or, drain it all and replace it with bacon fat.
If you're using fresh veggies, you're going to want to sautee them in the fat for a bit. Just enough to take the crunch off.
While those are cooking crack the eggs into a bowl and add the milk or cream.
Beat them together until they're starting to get a little foamy. Or, until you decide you're too tired to keep beating them, which ever comes first. Depends on how hungover lazy you are.
Pour the eggs into the pan with the veggies. If you don't already have veggies in the pan, add them now.
The reason you don't have to pre cook the pico: pico de gallo uses a combination of lime juice (acid) and salt to break down the cell walls of the veggies. This is a similar process to what cooking does. Same thing happens in ceviche, which I do not recommend for breakfast while hung over.
Add the meat now too. I had ham, but whatever your fave breakfast meat is will work.
Stir this all around until the egg is mostly set.
Sprinkle on the tortillas.
And then the cheese.
Turn the heat off and cover the pan so the cheese will melt.
While the cheese is melting, warm up the rest of the tortillas (I layer mine with damp paper towels and nuke em for a few seconds), and mash the leftover beans. This step is of course optional, but a pretty typical way to serve migas.
Yes, I had tortillas, and yes I still used the chips. I did say "if you're really not in the mood to deal with the extra step." I wasn't in the mood. Well...
Serve your migas with warmed tortiallas and beans, and some seriously strong coffee.
What's your favourite morning after food?
Reader Comments (6)
This is a Tex-Mex version of a dish that appears all across the Iberian Peninsula. The basic idea common to most versions of migas is the frying of leftover bread in a pan. The bread can be made from either wheat or corn (maize) or whatever other grain you like--and yes, tortillas are bread, which I figure I should point out. The Wikipedia entry gives a good overview. Me, I like the scrambled-egg Texas version, but that's to be expected.
Frying leftover bread in a pan with eggs sounds like a fast version of bread pudding... or french toast.
Food maps could be fun things to make. Hm....
This is probably one of the most interesting dishes. Is it okay to prepare it without the jalapeno?
You should make whatever changes you like to any recipe. Omitting the chile would be fine, for example. So would replacing the ham with, say, chorizo.
@ Halley, most recipes are infinitely flexible, as recipe guy points out.
Always feel free to change out ingredients you don't like, don't have, or don't want for ones you do. The only exceptions to this are baking ingredients (you really can't leave baking soda out of a cake), and ones that are integral to recipes (you can't have garlic bread without garlic). :)
I can rock this one out. I'm going to make this for dinner one night. I love breakfast for dinner.