Mexican Food, First Attempt

I couldn't resist that bite - I had to know!

My absolute favorite breakfast is Mexican chorizo and onions, scrambled with eggs, with sautéed peppers and cheese on a hot tortilla. So you can imagine the ideas that sprang to mind one recent Friday as I was grocery shopping and found CHORIZO.

This was my attempt to make my favorite Mexican breakfast, including my own homemade tortillas with chorizo, onions, peppers, eggs, and
cheese.

See how I fared at my first-ever attempt at tortilla making after the jump!

That coke bottle full of water was my first
attempt at a rolling pin. Fail.

So, as always, the hardest part of this whole ordeal was finding what I needed to make the food. This is a constant problem here.

Today's mystery ingredients: baking powder and lard. Absolutely no where to be found.

I mashed a couple tortilla recipes together to compensate (I hoped) for the lack of ingredients. I subbed oil for the lard and set aside the dough for an hour in a covered pot to try and compensate for the baking powder.

Next problem: the chorizo. As expected, it was a solidly cooked tube of Spanish chorizo (Mexican chorizo comes in a long case and is raw, and quite oily). I peeled off the casing and began to mash it up into a bowl with my fingers.

Because there was a lot less oil in the chorizo, I started sautéing the onions alone first. I hoped the meat would break down a little bit due to the slight fatty deposits. BTW: there is only one way to cut onions for this dish: slice off the tops and bottoms and then divide the onion into 4 or 8 sections from the top down. Wedges, not rings.

Just looking at this stuff makes me want to go down and try again.

I also got a red and green pepper started on the stove, giving them a healthy dose of cumin (I found cumin here!!) and garlic salt.

Adding the chorizo to the onions resulted in a bit of the oil and seasonings flavoring the onions, but not as much as I hoped. There was a bit too much oil in the bottom so I got rid of some and let the meat do its work.

After finishing these the meat/onion and peppers, I wiped out the pans and got to work on the dough. I divided it into 24 balls and smashed them flat (about 7" wide) on a marble surface. I found extra flour on the surface was a little icky.

Ahhhh... Mexican food, how I took you for granted!

One by one I draped them in the super-hot skillets and in no time had a stack. The first couple weren't that great, but I got a little better. Of course, there were some casualties of inattention - not all of them made it out unburnt!

They were mostly pretty good. I'd gotten some mozzarella cheese to cut up and it gave them a missing creaminess. I forgot about making eggs after this long process, so I'll have to add them in next time - I think they would have made it better. Everything was a tad bit oily... I'll have to drain things better next time, and I know I added too much oil to the dough.

But all in all, pretty satisfying breakfast, and it's always awesome to make a mess and cook something new!

I'm going to have to work on this tortilla recipe, though... this tortilla-desert I'm in is totally unsustainable. ;)