Fridge Raid Meal: Breakfast Tacos

13 May

Another day, another fridge raid breakfast.

I live with two of my best friends; both work from home, and don’t really have time in their mornings to make a nice cooked breakfast, even though they have a well stocked fridge and a lovely kitchen only metres away.

They love having me here as I do have the time in the mornings. So, the agreement is, if I’m there in the morning I’ll prepare a nice breakfast from things left in the fridge. It gets my creative juices flowing, gets them trying flavours and combinations they maybe wouldn’t usually, and of course reduces our household food waste.

This morning I found some tortillas in the freezer and dregs of a chipotle paste leftover from taco night. Immediately breakfast tacos came to mind, knowing I had eggs in the pantry.

I pulled the chipotle paste and could see it needed stretching, so I got the mayo out as well, thinking of making a chipotle mayo to drizzle. A heaped teaspoon of mayo and the rest of the chipotle mixed up with a little splash of water to loosen slightly, I couldn’t wait to assemble this one.

The fatty, spicy sauce and creamy scrambled eggs would go great with a salty hit, so the streaky bacon I had in the fridge would be a great crispy addition.

Thanks to Samin Nosrat, not a meal goes by where I don’t think about Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.
It’s a formula used for centuries in recipe development, but Samin made it something memorable for me.

We’ve got our Salt, bacon, we’ve got our Fat, mayonnaise and buttery eggs, we’ve got our Heat, chipotle. Now we need acidity. This also goes for something fresh and vibrant. With the mexican vibes coming from the chipotle and tortilla, I thought about a pico de gallo. I had a salad tomato rolling around the veg drawer and the last of a bunch of coriander. No onion unfortunately, but, desperate times and all. So I got to chopping and seasoned with salt and pepper.

Stretching ingredients
If you’ve only got a small number or portion of something, think about another way of serving it. For example, meat doesn’t have to be served as it comes in the packet.
Cook bacon and chop it up to crumble over the meal, pull sausage meat from its casing and fry up as little caramelised sausage pieces for sauces, slice chicken breasts and coat in the sauce you were going to pour over the whole breast.
This is how I make a small number of breasts, sausages, rashers etc. stretch for a larger number of people.

Only having 4 small rashers, I chopped the bacon to make it stretch between us by sprinkling over each taco.

I microwaved the soft tortillas in short bursts until they were pliable and easy to peel apart.

To maximise flavour I used the residual fat and fond on the bacon pan to lightly fry the tortillas, I think it makes them look more appetising with homemade burnishing marks, it also means that flavour isn’t wasted from the bacon.

With everything prepped, I scrambled the remaining 3 eggs in the cupboard with some butter and got to plating.

Top yours with anything else you have going: