Spicy Mexican Eggs with Roasted Potatoes

Hi Foodies !

As has been the case off late, I asked my home folks as to which country they desired breakfast from. 'Mexico' answered my wife in a flash. So, here's my twist to a Mexican breakfast recipe - 'Spicy Mexican Eggs with Skillet Roasted Potatoes'.

The ingredients listed below should suffice a group of 4-5 medium sized eaters. However, feel free to increase or decrease the quantities as per your palate.

Ingredients:

2 x Onions (finely diced)

2 x Bell peppers ( the green ones are fine - finely dice / chop them )

400 gms of (Pulpy tomato juice or Tomato Puree. Pulpy tomato juice is preferred)

125 gms of Cottage cheese ( either finely diced or in small chunks )

5-6 Green Chillies (finely diced)

8-10 Garlic cloves (finely diced)

4-5 Medium sized potatoes (finely diced)

8-9 x Scallions ( finely chopped ).

15 x Olives ( finely chopped. Use either the Green or Black Olives )

6-8 x stems of Cilantro ( finely chopped )

5 x Eggs

3 x Tablespoons of oil

1/2 x teaspoon of cumin seeds

1/2 x teaspoon of red chilly powder

1/2 x teaspoon of salt

1 x teaspoon of powdered black pepper

1/2 - 3/4 x teaspoon of paprika

Preparation before you start cooking:

Ensure the Onions, Bell peppers, Green chillies, Garlic cloves, Cilantro, Potatoes  are finely diced / chopped.

Ensure we use the greener portions of the scallions right upto the bulb. Ignore the root. We'll use about 3/4th of this while cooking and use the remaining 1/4th to garnish the dish later on.

Chopped olives should typically be available in most grocery stores. If not, chop them into concentric circles finely.

Crack the eggs and keep them in a bowl.

We are now ready to get into the active cooking portions.

The process:

1. Take a skillet and add about 1 tablespoon of oil to it.
2. Sautee the diced potatoes in this skillet. Add a hint of salt and pepper to taste. Ensure that the potatoes are about 70-80% cooked in the skillet. We can let the potatoes stay aside for a little bit.
3. Now lets start with picking up a non-stick pan big enough to hold this preparation for about 5 people. The pan I used was about 10 inches in diameter.
4. Set the pan over a low flame and let it get heated.
5. Once heated, lets pour 2 tablespoons of oil into it and allow it to get heated, just a little.
6. Now lets add the finely chopped onions to the pan and stir a little with a spatula.
7. Immediately, lets add the chopped bell peppers, the chopped garlic cloves, chopped green chillies and cumin seeds into the pan.
8. Lets sautee the entire mixture till it gets caramelized a little bit.
9. Lets add the 3/4th of the quantity of the finely chopped scallions to the mix and stir a little more.
10. To this sauteed mixture, we can add the pulpy tomato juice or tomato puree. Lets stir this a little bit.
11. Now we can add the salt, pepper and red chilly powder to the about mixture and stir some more. We can close the pan with a glass lid for a 2-3 minutes and let this cook a little.
12. We can then add the skillet roasted potatoes to the above sauteed mix. Lets stir this entire mixture a little.
13. At this point, we can add the paprika to this mix and stir lightly.
14. We can again close the lid of the pan and let this mixture in the pan cook for about 3-4 minutes.
15. We can then uniformly spread the sauteed mixture in the pan and try and level or flatten it with the spatula.
16. Once thats done - we can create 5 small craters or cavities in the mixture, big enough to house 1 egg each.
17. We can now add the eggs into each of these craters.
18. We can now sprinkle the chopped olives into the cooking pan.
19. Now we can sprinkle the remaining scallions over the entire preparation.
20. At the same time, we can now add the cottage cheese to this preparation. While, adding cottage cheese ensure that you don't loose sight of where each of the 5 eggs reside. 
21. Now we can sprinkle salt and pepper over this entire mixture (to taste).
22. Finally garnish the entire contents of the pan with the cilantro.
23. Now lets close the lid on the pan and lets everything cook and settle for 2-3 minutes.
24. Our dish is now ready to be consumed.
25. You can cut it into Pizza slices making sure each serving contains the cooked egg and set it out onto a plate and add 2-4 slices of toasted bread.
26. Bon Appetit !!!

Variations:

Here are some variations you can try. I haven't tried these, but I'm sure meat lovers will love these.

Grated cheese can be added after step 19.

OR / AND

Some, one or all of these can be tried before transitioning from step 19 to step 20.

1. Add 4-5 sliced cocktail sausages to the mix. We should have grilled or cooked these sausages prior to adding them to the mixture.

OR

1. Add 4-5 slices of cooked pork / chicken / turkey ham to the mixture. I prefer to cut the ham into small diced slices for this recipe.

OR

1. Add 4-5 strips of your choice of bacon nicely cooked over a grilling pan, again finely chopped into smaller cubes to the mixture.

OR

1. Add 4-5 finely sliced button mushrooms which have been sauteed in oil with spices of your choice.

Some pictures of the preparation: