Nigella's Mexican Scrambled Eggs

I'm starting to detect a theme here...

I feel that I have yet to learn how best to photograph scrambled eggs...

These scrambled eggs are pretty fantastic Nigella totes these as the ultimate hangover cure; even going so far as to suggest that they're worth deliberately hanging yourself over for... I'm not convinced anything is "worth" a hang over... but they're still pretty dang good!

There's something about eggs and chilli that just works for me! The kind of remind me of "Parsi Eggs" which are a spicy, Indian style of scrambled eggs my whole family enjoys... at some point I shall have to make and photograph 'em for y'all!

Now, Nigella calls for corn tortillas in her recipe; to the best of my knowledge you can't get corn tortillas in New Zealand... In fact, I've never seen a corn tortilla in the flesh my whole life! (Sheltered much?) I used the easily available flour tortilla to provide the crunch for my eggs... and to that end they worked fine! :) You could use the bottom few chips from a bag of corn chips, or even toast to the same effect, I would imagine...

A word on scrambling eggs: when I was first "taught" how to scramble eggs (ie; sans microwave) at school we were told to cook them reeeally slowly over a very low heat, stirring all the time 'else they'd go rubbery. This leads to very soft, but slightly grainy eggs, in my experience, not a texture I particularly enjoy. What I like to do is to crank the heat right up on a non-stick pan, melt a knob of butter and whip the eggs into a bubbly frenzy. Then I pour the eggs into the hot pan and allow them to set on the bottom before slowly pushing them 'round (wrinkling them, really) with a silicone spatula. Once you've wrinkled the first layer of egg, stop and let the next layer set on the hot pan before wrinkling again. Continue until all the eggs are neeearly cooked. Then turn off the heat and tip out onto a plate/piece of marmited toast... smother with HP Sauce and you're away (although I'd skip the marmite/HP sauce for Mexican eggs...)!

You don't want to cook the eggs all the way in the pan because they'll continue to cook in their own heat off the pan... over cooking eggs WILL make them rubbery!

The point of all this, I think, is scramble your eggs in the way that makes you most happy!

Click on for the ingredients...

Taste & Create: Chicken Acapulco

(sorry guys, this is super late)

For Taste & Create this month, my first in aaages I was paired with Sid of Sid's Sea Palm Cooking. SSPC is a really interesting blog with an eclectic collection of recipes from the Southern USA, Mexico and Denmark... I really enjoyed looking through the Danish recipes and trying to work out what they were for without first clicking the link for a translation. Swedish and Danish are quite similar, and I was fairly successful! :D

Ultimately though, I chose to make a Mexican recipe: Chicken Acapulco with Pico de Gallo!

(thank  you, blogger for re-flipping my images. I am most grateful. Not.)

Mexican recipes are kinda hard to get right in my neck of the woods (suburban NZ) because we simply don't have access to authentic ingredients... But I love almost anything that comes in a tortilla so I chose to give it a whirl! And I'm glad I did!

At it's most basic, this is what I would call a chicken burrito with cheese melted over the chicken while it was still in the pan... but the result is so much more than that!

Cheesy, cheesy goodness!

I had a slight issue in that Sid called for a specific meat marinade but I was able to google the name of the company and check it's listed ingredients... I made my own marinade using the ingredients listed and although the result might not be the same as the packet (I have no way of knowing!) it was still pretty darn good! Kinda sour and salty with a bit of heat from the mustard powder and paprika.

Soy sauce, paprika, mustard, lemon juice, garlic and onion whizzed together with cider vinegar, oil and water; it's a winner!

And that Pico de Gallo! Wow! It was so fresh and fantastic! And perfect accompaniment! Don't do as I did thought, and attempt to whizz it all up in a too small blender - be intrepid and cut your own... I ended up with mush. It didn't detract from the flavour any, but the texture was kinda weird.

Thanks Sid and Min ; this was a lot of fun!

Raw chicken will never be the prettiest; but it turns into some pretty tasty things!