chorizo and scrambled eggs
Every time we visit our daughter Dana, and her family, we have some chorizo and eggs. Her husband Todd has some Hispanic heritage in his bloodline, and he’s the breakfast cook in the family. Whenever he visits us here in So. California, he likes to make a trip to Whole Foods to buy their chorizo. Of all the chorizo out there, he really likes theirs better than others. He explained that chorizo is one of those products kind of like hot dogs, where the meat processors use all the leftover pieces of everything, (I don’t know about organ meat - I hope not) and they throw in a bunch of chile powder and other seasonings, I suppose. The chorizo from Spain is somewhat different – can even be more like a dried sausage, and probably isn’t seasoned with heat, but with paprika or other dried mild chiles. Whereas, the Mexican versions (which must be unique to every cook, just like tomato/meat sauce is to an Italian home cook) contain more spicy ground chiles.

I’ve been disappointed with the chorizo from the regular grocery stores. The meat just looks gooey. And it’s drippy with some kind of dark red liquid (partly the chile peppers). I don’t like meat that oozes. So in my mind, cheaper chorizo is more suspicious. Since I’ve read enough stories about how the meat producers use all those “other” meat parts from the cow or pig, and they employ chemicals to distill it to mush, I assume they do the same for chorizo. So, Whole Foods is my only source for chorizo. Theirs is encased in links, fat links, so you can cook them as is, or slip the meat out of the casing.

The CHORIZO & EGGS: Todd didn’t have any Whole Foods chorizo the other morning. Since I didn’t have to cook it and observe the ooze, I had some. And it was ever so good. I’d never cooked with chorizo until Todd came into our family. He cooks up the chorizo in a nonstick skillet until most of the fluid has dried up. He doesn’t stir it much, because he likes the chorizo to have some form (pieces rather than mush). Meanwhile he beats up a bunch of eggs (he may add just a small splash of milk to the eggs – I add water to mine, not milk). He pours off any pools of fat, then pours in the eggs to the pan with the chorizo. The skillet gets stirred until the eggs are nearly set, then he sprinkles a bunch of shredded cheddar cheese on top. He puts a cover on it for a minute until it’s melted and they’re done. You can eat the eggs plain, but the only way to eat it in their household is scooped into piping hot flour tortillas and eaten out of hand.