Breakfast by Tiffany; Arizona-style

The beautiful sunshine that London has been so lucky to have this weekend reminds me of home and inspired me to make one of my favourite breakfasts...breakfast burritos! This is a great Southwestern-American breakfast that includes a lot of the same ingredients as a typical cooked breakfast but all wrapped up in a nice tidy tortilla package. This is one of the only southwestern/mexican style breakfasts that is easy to make in the UK as it is made from flour tortillas and not corn tortillas. Corn tortillas are difficult to track down in the UK... Cool Chile co has a booth at the Borough Market and will sell you a dozen for a steep £2. Every time I get them there I vow to make my own...and really I should more often. Flour tortillas, however, are sold at every major supermarket for less than a pound for a packet of 6. Just get the store brand plain tortillas...they are softer and cheaper than the El Paso or Mission brand. They aren't like the fresh ones in AZ, but they do the job ;)

The most important ingredients are the potato and the egg. These two items put the "breakfast" in the burrito. A lot of times (like at McDonalds) you'll get just eggs and cheese. The potato adds another texture that works really well. To make it great it would also have machaca beef or mexican chorizo. If you happen to find yourself in Tucson, AZ and keen to try a breakfast burrito at its best, then track down a Nico's Tacos. It is a 24-hour fast food restaurant local to Tucson and soooo good. It is the only drive-through I recommend. It is family run, but they now have 8 locations. I order the machaca beef breakfast burrito. Machaca beef is delicious slow cooked, spicy, shredded beef -with the potato and egg it is a perfect combination. Since machaca beef or mexican chorizo aren't available in the UK (without some significant effort) I go for spanish chorizo or sans carne (no meat). Here I am going to try bacon...as I thought that might be a popular British choice.


To make 4-6 burritos:
250kg potatoes (diced)
4 slices of chopped bacon
1 chopped green bell pepper
1 clove of minced garlic (optional)
2 spring onions (chopped)
4 eggs
200g shredded cheese

2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
1 ripe avocado, halved, pitted, peeled, sliced
handful chopped coriander

hot sauce or salsa

Cook potato in a pot of salted boiling water until just tender (about 5 minutes). Drain and set aside.

Heat 1T oil in a heavy skillet. Cook bacon over medium heat for 2-3 minutes; add green bell pepper and stir frequently until the bacon is beginning to brown and the pepper softens. Add the potato and cook over medium heat stirring occasionally until tender and browned. Add the spring onion and garlic, cook a minute more and remove potato mixture from pan and set aside.

Whisk together eggs and season with salt and pepper. Heat remaining 1T oil in the same pan, add egg mixture and cook, stirring to scramble until just heated through. Remove from heat. If cheese is used add it to the egg here so that it melts nicely.

In another dry skillet, heat a tortilla for approximately 1 minute each side to soften. Spoon into horizontal rows in the low centre of the tortilla some of the potato mixture, egg, chopped coriander and sliced avocado. I prefer to also add the hot sauce at this stage, but for guests it is best to let them add it themselves. Fold outer edges of tortilla in about two inches, hold in place and roll up from the bottom to securely enclose the burrito.

Breakfast burritos are great served with Horchata. A mexican rice milk drink flavoured with sugar, cinnamon and vanilla. Cool Chile co sells a Horchata Syrup that just needs to be mixed with water. Otherwise just a cup of coffee is nice too.