Soy una raya en el mar
Fantasma en la ciudad
Mi vida va prohibida
Dice la autoridad

I'm a just a line on the sea
A ghost in the city
My life is prohibited
Says the authority

Clandestino Manu Chao

Huevos rancheros is Mexican farming food. An equivalent of the full Irish breakfast. Every previously agrarian culture seems to have its own take on the breakfast which is no longer fit for everyday consumption due to the changing nature of work. I’d imagine that you can plot the development of society (for better or worse, that’s for debate) by tracking the dominant breakfast of the day. Like the agrarian breakfast of other nations, huevos rancheros now plays the role of special weekend breakfast/brunch treat of a generation for whom even the quarter acre of their parents seems like an ambitious tract of land to own. It is a ghost of the farmer past for modern service industry serf.

This version (like everything I do) is far from bone fide. Real huevos rancheros should come with corn tortilla, refried beans and guacamole. But if you have IBS you’ll see why changes needed to be made! Anyway, the result is a fantastically satisfying breakfast, with the creamy eggs nestling and mixing with a piquant smokey sauce.

Serves 2

Based on: Simple tomato sauce recipe.

2 cups of tomato sauce 
1 teaspoon smoked hot paprika
1 teaspoon ground cumin
2 fresh free range eggs

• Heat the tomato sauce in a frying pan over medium heat
• Add the cumin and paprika whilst heating
• When warm through make two indentations in the sauce for the eggs
• Increase the heat to high
• Pre-crack the eggs into a teacup (if you are a nervous egg cracker like me)
• Pour the eggs into the indentations
• Allow to cook for around three minutes (until the eggs start to set)
• Transfer the pan to underneath a grill (or into an over pre-heated to 200 Celsius)
• Allow to cook for a further four minutes
• Remove - serve in the pan for maximum effect