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Torchy’s-Inspired Fried Egg Breakfast Tacos (with bonus recipes from Ginger’s Kitchen!)

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Learning about Torchy’s secret menu is like being handed the key to a city made of candy. It feels like dancing through streets made of spicy breakfast meats with rivers of poblano cream sauce. In other words, it is exciting. These tacos are outrageously over-the-top. In my pre-secret-menu innocence, my favorite taco was the green chile pork. Essentially shredded pork in a corn tortilla. The secret menu version, Missionary-style green chile pork, adds pickled red onions, guacamole, jack cheese, and chipotle sauce, and then the whole thing is deep fried so the corn tortilla gets beautifully crisp, and then that’s wrapped in a flour tortilla so your hands don’t get greasy. It’s deliciously clever. Another taco, the Jack of Clubs, is easier to recreate at home and just as delicious. It’s black beans, potatoes, a fried egg, tortilla strips, jack cheese, sour cream, and cilantro. I am so enamored with the missionary-style technique of combining a fried corn tortilla with a soft flour one that I added that technique to this taco, in lieu of the crunchy tortilla strips on the Torchy’s version. I omitted the potatoes (which almost seemed mashed in the Torchy’s taco and were quite tasty) because the taco was a lot easier to make without them, but you should add them if you’ve got the time.

I made this the taco in my friend Abbie’s kitchen, with a group of fellow food52ers. We call ourselves Ginger’s Kitchen (after Abbie’s sweet pup) and bounce ideas off of each other and come up with collaborative recipes.  Here are the two we developed that morning for that week’s food52 contest, Your Best Weekday Breakfast. None of our recipes were selected as possible finalists, but I can assure you they were all quite tasty!

Johnny McGriddle Sandwich
Our homemade spin on a McDonald’s McGriddle, replacing the pancakes with johnny cakes (cornmeal pancakes) and the sausage with a Mexican chorizo patty.  There’s maple sugar in the pancake batter, but you could go the extra step of making your own maple sugar crystals, which will then melt into delicious pockets of syrup in your finished pancake a la this recipe– it’s easier than it sounds and so good!

S’More Grilled Cheese, Please
A grilled “cheese” sandwich featuring cream cheese, almond butter, dark chocolate, and strawberries. I can assure you that you won’t be disappointed if you put chocolate on bread and grill it in butter. The rest of the ingredients are definitely gilding the lily, but we devoured it all the same!

The Ultimate Fried-Egg Breakfast Taco

inspired by Torchy’s Jack of Clubs taco
makes 2 hearty tacos

  • 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 2 corn tortillas
  • 2 flour tortillas
  • 1 cup cooked black beans (canned or homemade, recipe follows)
  • 1 tablespoon butter
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/4 cup grated cheddar or jack cheese
  • 1 handful of cilantro
  • 1/2 lime
  • pickled jalapenos
  • kosher salt and black pepper
  1. Get out two skillets. Heat both over medium heat. Put a flour tortilla in one and toast it a bit on both sides until it has puffed up. Repeat with the second flour tortilla. Meanwhile, put the 2 tablespoons of oil in the other skillet and, when the oil is hot and shimmery, put a corn tortilla in and shallow-fry it on both sides, until it has crisped up a bit but is still malleable, about 30 seconds per side. Repeat with the second corn tortilla. Put one flour tortilla on each of two plates and top each with the fried corn tortilla. (Yes, each taco will have two tortillas!) 
  2. When the tortillas are done, put the black beans and a splash of their cooking liquid into the dry pan where you toasted the flour tortillas and heat them gently and season to taste. Melt the tablespoon of butter in the pan where you fried the corn tortillas (leaving the remaining oil in the pan) and crack in two eggs. Cover this pan with a lid and cook until the whites are set and the yolks are still runny, about 2-4 minutes (check them often!). You might need to spoon some of the fat in the pan over the top of the whites to finish them off. 
  3. Assemble the tacos by spooning some of the black beans onto the tortillas and top with a sprinkling of cheddar. Put the fried egg on next and season with salt and pepper. Put a good handful of cilantro on next and squeeze some lime juice over it, and then add 3-4 pickled jalapeno slices. Enjoy!
Great Homemade Black Beans

This is the same basic formula I use for any kind of bean (pinto, cannelini, garbanzo) and it works beautifully with all of them. I don’t always include the bacon strip but it adds a wonderful hint of smokiness.
  • about 1 pound dried black beans, soaked in plenty of water overnight
  • 2 dried bay leaves
  • 3 garlic cloves, peeled
  • 1 slice of bacon
  • Kosher salt
Put the soaked beans in a large dutch oven and cover with two inches of cold water. Add the bay leaves, garlic, and bacon slice, and then season the water with plenty of kosher salt (as much salt as you would use for pasta water- several tablespoons). Bring the pot to a boil over high heat and then lower the heat to low, cover, and simmer until the beans are done, 1-2 hours. (I prefer to transfer the covered pot of beans to a 300 degree oven after they’ve come to a boil because that keeps it at a very even and gentle simmer without having to constantly monitor and regulate your stove’s burner.) Test your beans at the one hour mark by eating a few- they should be soft and creamy. If not using all the beans right away, transfer them to mason jars and cover with their cooking liquid.  You can freeze them like that too.

Bacon and Spinach Quiche with Latke Crust

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It’s the last day of the month, so that must mean it’s time for another gluten&dairy-free-pie-of-the-month post! Strawberries (and delicious ones too!) have already made their way to my farmers’ market, and so I seriously thought about a strawberry pie this month, followed by two more strawberry variations for April and May, but opted instead for a savory one.  I saw a Martha Stewart recipe for a quiche with a hash brown crust and was immediately smitten with the idea. But the recipe was a bit lacking- you dump a bag of frozen hash browns in a pie pan and bake it for a measly 25 minutes, which didn’t seem like enough time to get the potatoes sufficiently crispy. Then, on instagram a few days ago, mrswheelbarrow posted a pic of a gorgeous potato crust all ready for the oven.  She very kindly explained her technique to me (which is listed in the recipe below) and the results were just as I’d hoped for.  Like a delicious latke, beautifully seasoned, firm but easy to cut through on the bottom of the quiche and delightfully light and crisp around the edges. The inside of the quiche features local bacon from Flying Pig, spinach from my garden (planted as a lovely surprise by the Kitchen Gardener!) and my favorite easy quiche filling, with the normal heavy cream and milk mixture replaced by a can of full-fat coconut milk. I was very happy with it, and it is one of those blessed results where you miss neither the gluten nor the dairy.

Bacon and Spinach Quiche with Latke Crust
filling adapted from Cooks Illustrated’s quiche lorraine, crust slightly adapted from Mrs. Wheelbarrow

  • 2 medium-large russet potatoes
  • 1/2 large white onion
  • 2 eggs, lightly beaten
  • lots of kosher salt and black pepper
  • 1 tablespoon canola oil
  • 4 oz bacon
  • small bunch spinach, washed and chopped into rough 1-inch pieces
  • more kosher salt and black pepper
  • 2 large eggs
  • 2 egg yolks
  • one 14oz(ish) can of full-fat coconut milk
  • still more kosher salt and black pepper
  1. For the crust: Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Peel the potatoes and onion half and grate them, by hand or with the grater attachment of your food processor if you’ve got one.  Put the grated potatoes and onion in a colander set in the sink, and let sit for a few minutes. Grab one small handful at a time and squeeze as much water out as possible, until you’ve squeezed it all, then let sit for another 5 minutes or so and squeeze all the water out again. The more water you’re able to squeeze out the better your final product will be- it’s worth being meticulous here! Transfer the squeezed-out vegetables to a medium bowl, and toss with the two beaten eggs and plenty of salt and pepper. Press the potato mixture into a pie pan or a springform pan, pushing the mixture up the sides.  Bake the crust for 40 minutes. Then take the crust out of the oven, brush all over with the canola oil, and put back in the oven for an additional 10 minutes. 
  2. For the filling: Meanwhile, dice the bacon into roughly 1/2 inch pieces and put in a cast iron skillet set over medium heat. Cook, tossing occasionally, until most of the bacon is crisp, 5-7 minutes. Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon and drain on a paper towel. Pour off all but about a tablespoon of the bacon fat into a small bowl for another day and add the washed and chopped spinach to the bacon-greased skillet. Cook until the spinach has wilted and much of the water has evaporated, about 3 minutes, and season with salt and pepper. 
  3. For the quiche: When the crust is done, lower the oven temperature to 375 degrees. Sprinkle the bacon in the bottom of the crust and distribute the sauteed spinach on top of that, as evenly as possible. Put two whole eggs and two egg yolks in a medium bowl. Whisk gently and then add the can of coconut milk and a good amount of salt and pepper (at least a teaspoon of kosher salt) and whisk again so that the ingredients are well blended. Pour the egg mixture over the bacon and spinach and put the quiche in the oven and bake for 40-45 minutes, or until the center of the quiche is set when you jiggle the pan. Let cool a bit and eat warm or at room temperature. 

Who Wants Seconds? A Cookbook Review

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The Piglet, food52’s annual tournament of cookbooks, is one of my very favorite things to read on the web, and I look forward to it with the fervor and fanaticism that most people reserve for their home town football team. The reviews cover 16 of the most notable cookbooks from the year, and they are pitted against each other in a bracket-style tournament. The winning book this year was selected because it was deemed to be the one that cooks would reach for most often in their day-to-day cooking, a metric I completely agree with. But if that’s the case, then Jennie Cook’s new cookbook, Who Wants Seconds?, may very well have won my personal vote for cookbook of the year.

My delightful sister Helen worked for Jennie at her much loved restaurant in Culver City, the Double Dutch Dinette, where she said everyone was a regular. It was the type of place where if you wanted to learn how to cook, they would teach you. Jennie encouraged everyone to cook and made everyone feel like an important member of the team. All of her employees were viewed as artists and creative people and if someone had a good idea she would use it. Art on the walls was from the waiter or the chef’s girlfriend. If you were good at writing you worked on the website. If you had an idea for food or the menu, even if you weren’t a chef, your idea was taken seriously. Helen, in a bad mood one day, made herself an ice cream sundae, which ended up being a feature of every Sunday dinner service. Helen describes her time there as the absolute best place to learn and grow. This love of teaching and creativity is infused through Jennie’s beautiful cookbook. She has picked up recipes and techniques through the people she has met and worked with, and the end result is a cookbook that blends the classic comfort food she grew up eating with more modern and global flavors, sprinkled with great tips for hosting parties and planning meals from the queen of LA catering.


Jennie’s recipe for Slow Roasted Baked Beans is one of the first ones in the book, and I knew I had to make it after reading her headnote: 
“Every Saturday night we had the same meal: charcoal-grilled steaks, baked beans, home fries, and a salad. We always ate late on Saturday nights. Cocktail hour still started at 5, but the weekend pace was leisurely, pushing diner till 7. This meant more time to dance in the kitchen. (As party people we love to dance.) I loved watching Ma and Pop gently swing around the kitchen to Sinatra, with Ma harmonizing in her sexiest voice. I still also love a little piece of steak and a big plate of slow-roasted baked beans. Saturday night steak dinner will always have a hold on me.”
Wonderful, right? I love the familiarity, the nostalgia, and the casual tone of Jennie’s writing. The bean recipe itself is simple and delicious. (I’ve copied it at the bottom of this post). I used canned whole tomatoes squished up a bit with my fingers instead of tomato sauce and really liked it that way, because the larger chunks of tomato got sweet and roasty and it really reminded me of a full english breakfast. One important note about this recipe and the other bean recipes in this cookbook though. Jennie recommends not salting the beans before cooking, which she says makes them tough, and her recipes also include a bit of vinegar in the cooking water, a vegan old wives tale of sorts about making the beans easier to digest. I recommend you do just the opposite. ALWAYS salt beans while cooking (this won’t make them tough but will make them taste better- see why here and here), and never add an acid like vinegar or tomatoes to beans before they’re cooked- this is what causes beans to seize up and stay too firm. The best way to make beans easier to digest is to eat more beans. Your body gets used to it and you won’t be plagued by GI issues.

Farro al Fresco – this is a wonderful formula for making any grain salad, which includes something green, some nuts, dried fruit, crumbled chevre, and a simple vinaigrette. 

Green Beans with Chile Pecans and Sesame Dressing were light and satisfying. I’m not a huge fan of green beans, but the sesame oil plus chile pecans made them much more palatable!

Feijoada, a Brazilian black bean and sweet potato stew was a delight. Jennie’s recipe is vegan and served with a delicious pineapple relish. As with the the baked bean recipe above, I’d recommend that you omit the vinegar from the cooking water and add plenty of salt instead. This is a great party recipe (it makes a ton!), and is naturally gluten free and vegan too.

Cumin Scented Turkey Meatloaf with Creamy Gravy and the Amazing Corn Sensation. This turkey meatloaf is easily worth the price of the cookbook- it is my new go-to meatloaf and absolutely perfect.  Most meatloaf recipes call for 3 different meats (pork, veal, and beef) to get the texture and flavor right. Jennie manages to make the most sublimely-textured meatloaf using just ground poultry and a few tricks. I used ground chicken because it was readily available at my farmer’s market and it was still fabulous. Jennie calls for 3/4 cup of quick oats to be mixed in, which she says “create an almost creamy center.” It’s true! And I didn’t have quick oats, only the thick old-fashioned rolled oats, and they still disappeared into the meatloaf and made it creamy and delicious. The cumin really adds a delicious note too.  I can’t say enough good stuff about this meatloaf. Get the book and try it!

The creamy gravy and amazing corn sensation were both lovely and perfect accompaniments to the meatloaf, but they definitely played second fiddle in my book!

Jennie’s book is filled with tons of appealing recipes, and the recipes themselves are very thoughtfully written and just the sort of thing I like to cook on a weeknight. A lovely book written by a lovely person.

Slow Roasted Baked Beans
adapted slightly from Who Wants Seconds?

prep time: overnight soaking
cooking time: 4 1/2 to 5 hours
serves 10 as a side dish

  • 1 pound dried white beans, soaked overnight in 4 quarts water
  • kosher salt
  • 3 sprigs thyme
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 1 onion, diced
  • 1 cup dark brown sugar
  • 2 cups tomato sauce or crushed whole tomatoes
  • 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
  • sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a large stockpot, cover the beans with water by 2 or 3 inches, add thyme, bay leaves, and enough kosher salt to make the water taste like the sea, and bring the beans to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat and simmer until beans are soft, about 1 hour.
Meanwhile, combine onion, sugar, tomato sauce, and mustard in medium bowl. When beans are soft, drain the cooking water, remove bay leaves and thyme stems, and stir beans into sauce mixture. Pour into greased 4-quart glass, ceramic, or stainless pan and bake, covered, for 3 hours. Check and add more water, one cup at a time, as necessary, keeping it saucy but not watery. Uncover and continue cooking until beans are caramelized on top, 30-55 minutes. Taste and add salt and pepper if needed. 
Variation: Grammy added a pound of chopped raw bacon to the pot, and I’d certainly understand if you chose to do the same.
What a delightful book! I hope you get a chance to read and cook from it!