Eat Me!: Quick breakfast tacos

I'm in Austin, TX for SXSW this week. Obviously could devote umpteen posts to Austin street food, or our upcoming meal at Uchiko, but I'm here for bidness. And bidness calls. But before I check out, I got a request to publish my recipe for breakfast tacos.

So, the nasty little secret is that I don't have a recipe for breakfast tacos. I just whipped some up with what was around this morning. Luckily they turned out well, and folks appreciated them. So I'll just write up what I did.

Two asides before I dive into the recipe, too.

1. I fucking love Austin. It's basically what Portland would be if it had the UofO there, and better weather, and better music, and better food.

2. When cooking, don't focus too much on technique or wild recipes. You can make great food by just figuring out what would balance the flavors you want to achieve, and the textures you want to feature. If I'm thinking about making a salad with a tart grapefruit, I want to balance the tartness and fibrous texture out with a mellow, crispy element. Jicama. Asian Pear. It's just that easy.

Breakfast Tacos:

• 12 flour or whole wheat tortillas (The fresher, the better. I can't stress this enough - buy fresh flour tortillas from Whole Paycheck. It will revolutionize your Latin American cooking)
• 1 red onion
• 1 cucumber
• 1 small squash
• vinegar
• sugar
• salt
• whole peppercorns
• 12 eggs, room temperature (take your eggs out of the fridge 1 hr before cooking)
• 3 avocados, diced
• 1 lime
• cheese blend - jack & cheddar works, but splurge on cotija if you want)
• 12 strips of bacon

1. take eggs out to get to room temp

2. make your pickling mixture: small handful of salt, small handful of sugar, 3 parts water, 1 parts vinegar.

3. small dice on the cucumber and red onion. reserve half of the onion. drop cucumber and red onion into the pickling mixture, along with about 12-15 whole peppercorns. cover and refridgerate for at least 30 mins.

4. thin slice squash; heat skillet to medium w/ olive oil. add last half of red onion and squash, saute until translucent and then reduce heat to low.

5. begin cooking bacon in pan over medium high heat. remove when it starts to crisp. cover in paper towels, and put in the microwave. blast it for 1 min right before serving to warm it up and crisp a bit more. reserve a small amount of bacon grease.

6. heat large pan on medium, use bacon grease..spread so thinned, not pooled. this will give your tortillas a little bacon-y flavor and be slightly greasy. deposit tortillas, sprinkle cheese on, wait til cheese melts but doesn't bubble.

7. while this is going on, heat another small pan to medium, coat conservatively with butter, and fry egg. i like my yolks runny, but feel free to cook them however you like. just know that if you dont cook them easy, you suck at life.

8. plate tortilla, combine egg, diced avocado, pickled cucumber & onion, sauted squash & onion, diced bacon.

9. put taco in your pie hole. rub tummy repeatedly.