Huevos Rancheros Rápidos
Tinned tomatoes fried hard with dried chilli, black beans stirred through, and eight eggs sunk into the lot under a lid.
Why it works
Frying the tomatoes over high heat until they darken and stop smelling raw is what separates a ranchero sauce from warmed passata, and it takes four minutes. The eggs then poach in the sauce itself, so the yolks stay loose while the whites set against the hot base of the pan.
Method
- Warm the dry pan over medium-high heat and toast the tortillas for 20 seconds a side, until they smell nutty and flex without cracking. Stack them on the board under a cloth.
- Add the oil, onion, garlic, torn chipotle and cumin to the same pan and fry 3 minutes, until the onion turns translucent and the chilli smells sweet.
- Tip in the tomatoes and raise the heat. Fry hard for 4 minutes, stirring, until the sauce darkens to brick red and a spoon dragged through leaves a clear channel. Stir in the beans and salt.
- Make eight shallow wells with the back of the spoon and crack an egg into each. Cover and cook 4 minutes, until the whites are opaque and the yolks still shiver when you nudge the pan.
- Scatter over avocado, feta and coriander, and take the pan to the table with the tortillas and lime.
For the toddler
The chilli joins the onion at step 2, so theirs is easier made apart, a spoonful of the tinned tomatoes in a small pan with a few beans crushed under a fork and no salt, and an egg cooked in the middle of it. Keep the feta off their plate, since it is salt through and through. Tear the tortilla into strips and slice the avocado into soft fingers.
How the toddler notes workChef’s notes
Pinto or kidney beans behave the same. No dried chilli means 2 tsp smoked paprika and a pinch of cayenne.
Build the sauce to the end of step 3 the night before; it takes the eggs in 5 minutes from cold.
Wilt a bag of spinach into the sauce before the eggs, or add plain rice.
The sauce keeps 3 days; the eggs do not, so poach only what you will eat.