Friday, March 04, 2011

Cracking Up

This morning I got up at the crack of dawn. Actually, it was the pre-crack of dawn, if we're being specific about it.

This is because most of my team sits in New York and they had scheduled a training session - one that, based on the subject line, seemed incredibly crucial to my job as it covers 95% of what I do all day at work.

The session was at 9:30am. On the East Coast. For those of you who are not good at math, that's 6:30am for me. That's earlier than I get up most days, unless I'm trying to catch a flight. Not cool. Not cool at all.

I decided the only way to get over my bitterness at being totally inconsequential to the decision to schedule this meeting was to treat myself. I hauled myself out of bed at 5:50am (oh, how it hurts) and stumbled down the hill to Peet's coffee to order a LARGE cafe au lait. If they had a VAT size, I would have ordered that. The brisk walk back up the hill helped wake me up and I then dialed into the WebEx, put my phone on speaker, and got to making myself some breakfast.

My super smart friend Leslie told me something really interesting the other day: the reason you feel hungover is not because of the alcohol, per se, but because the alcohol in your system prevents you from sleeping normally, so you actually wake up incredibly sleep deprived. Which is why if you can "sleep it off," you tend to feel so much better, not that I have any personal experience in this area, Mom and Dad. Ahem.

Anyway, it logically follows that if you are sleep deprived, you feel a bit hungover, even if you didn't have a drop of alcohol the night before. Witness my morning.

Thus, hangover food was required. My dear friend Meredith texted the other day asking about migas, so I had them on the brain. Migas is this incredibly delicious Tex-Mex breakfast involving, in essence, eggs scrambled with salsa and tortillas. There are all kinds of ways to gussy them up, but those are the basics.

Here's my own migas recipe. Please, please keep in mind that everything in here is approximate and if you decide to make these, you should really adjust everything to your own taste. Play around with this, it's hard to mess it up.

Kate's Migas for One
(Can be easily doubled, tripled, or even duodectupled to meet the needs of your crowd, should you have a crowd demanding breakfast)

Seriously, this couldn't be easier.

Essential Ingredients:
2-3 eggs
1 - 4 tablespoons salsa (Any salsa you like is fine, the fresher, the better. I really like to make migas with green chile-tomatillo salsa)
1 corn tortilla, torn into 1-inch-ish pieces (precision not required) or a handful of tortilla chips (crunched up) - Note, do not use flour tortillas for this part

Optional Ingredients:
~ 1/4 cup finely diced red or green bell pepper
~ 1 tablespoon finely diced onion or shallot
Half a jalapeno, ribs and seeds removed (or keep them if you want it HOT), finely minced

Accompaniments, For Serving (all optional):
Flour or corn tortillas
Guacamole
More salsa
Sour cream
Finely shredded cheddar or jack cheese
Whatever else you want


Directions:
Saute any "optional" ingredients you are using in a bit of olive or canola oil until they are softened but not browned. Set aside to cool for a bit.

In the meantime, crack your eggs in a bowl and whisk with a fork to blend. Add salsa, salt and pepper. I recommend using about 1/4 cup of salsa for every 2-3 eggs. There aren't precise measurements here, you just have to go with it. Add the slightly cooled veggies and stir to blend. (You can also add a quarter cup of drained, rinsed canned black beans at this point if you want to.) Add the torn up tortillas and stir to coat all the bits. Let this mixture sit for 15 minutes or so, 30 minutes if you are using hard tortilla chips instead of soft corn tortillas.


Torn up tortilla example in front of the egg mixture. Sorry to provide pics so late in the process but it only occurred to me midway through the process to write about this. I blame the brain fog resulting from the early wake-up.

Then you just scramble this mixture like you would normal scrambled eggs. Once they are done to your liking, that's it!


Voila! (What's the Spanish for "voila?") Migas!
SO EASY!

I topped mine with a little cilantro (which I also mixed into the eggs) and some yogurt in lieu of sour cream which is a tasty trick taught to me by a darling 2-year old. Try it!

You can scale this up or down as needed, I have made it with two dozen eggs before for a brunch party. Anything goes, so just find the combo of ingredients you like. It is a great way to use up those broken tortilla chips in the bottom of the bag. 

Happy Friday!

3 comments:

Chrissy said...

Oh dear, I do miss eggs. This looks heavenly.

(And Josie would like to clarify that she is two AND A HALF. To which I could clarify that she is two and five sixths. But that is neither here nor there.)

Kate said...

Why do you miss eggs? What happened??

You know, I actually thought about that Josie would correct me on that. But then I decided she was 2 (and a quarter) when she told me about the yogurt, so I just went with rounding on that. :)

Kathleen Dames said...

Embarrassed to say I did not know what migas were until now, but they sound fantastic!