Give Me Five: Fried-egg tacos with tomato and chilli salsa

What do you do when you’ve just lost your crown as world’s best chef? If you’re René Redzepi you take off your suit jacket, roll up your shirt sleeves and slap out perfect fried eggs at the after-party.

It’s not every day you get a fried-egg taco cooked by a world-class chef. So it was brilliant to watch as Redzepi and Rosio Sánchez, his former pastry chef at Noma (and possibly the coolest woman on the planet) cooked up tacos for a hungry crowd at London’s Clove Club a couple of weeks ago. Chicago-born Sánchez has just opened her own taco shop, Hija de Sánchez in Copenhagen. Unsurprisingly these tacos were the world’s best, especially after an evening inhaling nothing more substantial than adrenalin, intrigue and canapes. These were saucer-sized corn tacos, topped with fried eggs, crispy brown at the edges, with chicken mole, a clump of grass green coriander and a squeeze of lime.

Taco Tuesdays (sometimes Taco Thursdays) are a regular feature in our house. They’re a great way to get a family veggie meal into the week’s line-up, with beans and cheese taking the place of meat. A taco is a fried tortilla. We typically fry the dinner-plate-sized wraps and slice them into triangles. If I have a ripe avocado, it might get mushed with finely chopped onion, chilli and lime juice to give some guacamole for the grown-ups. Like pizza, tacos can be as simple or fancy as you like. We’re lucky enough to live near Lily Ramirez’s Portobello outpost My Mexican Shop, where we can stock up on her packs of 20 saucer-sized corn tortillas. These are made in Dublin from maize flour, are gluten-free and perfect for this recipe.

Fried-egg tortillas struck me as an even quicker tasty supper. They are so fast they can fill the gap between the I’m-bunched-let’s-get-takeout urge and sitting down to a tasty home-cooked meal. You have a layer of carbs, the egg for protein and then a third- flavour topping, which can range from the tomatoes in this recipe to beef, beans, bacon, guacamole, cheese or all of the above.

The smaller, individual-portion tacos can be difficult to find, so you can hack the larger ones with a scissors, cutting them to size so that each taco fits one fried egg. It’s worth seeking out corn tortillas rather than wheat ones, as they bring a completely different, nutty warmth to the dish. If you do have to cut them down to size, keep the spare tyre of tortilla dough and fry it separately for homemade tortilla chips, perfect for scooping up leftover salsa or guacamole.

• Lilly Higgins is on leave

FRIED-EGG TACOS WITH TOMATO AND CHILLI SALSA: SERVES 4

The five ingredients

• 8 free-range organic eggs
• 8 small corn tortillas
• 10 ripe cherry tomatoes
• 2 small red onions
• 2small red chillis

From the pantry

• A squeeze of lime juice
• Sunflower oil
• Sea salt and black pepper
• Fresh coriander or flat-leaf parsley

Method

Chop your tomatoes as finely as you can and scoop the juice, seeds and flesh into a bowl.

Finely mince your onion and cut the chilli into tiny, thin strips. Do a taste test to see how much heat you want, and decide whether to use or discard some of the seeds. Stir the onion and chilli into the tomato and add a good squeeze of lime juice.

Give the tomato salsa a good sprinkling of sea salt and black pepper and set it to one side.

Heat a light slick of sunflower oil in a heavy pan until it starts to sizzle but before it starts to smoke. Break an egg gently into the pan, holding it as close to the heat as you can bear so the splash is kept to a saucer-sized circle. Don’t worry if your aim for small and round turns into long and scraggly; use a spatula to scrape the egg white into a better shape. Carefully flip the egg when the bottom has crisped and then put a tortilla in the pan.

The tortilla will brown on both sides in the time it takes to finish the egg. You can stack the eggs and tortillas on plates in a warm oven if you want to serve them all together, but these are best eaten immediately, served as they’re done. Top each egg with a good helping of salsa and let your diners assemble the finishing touches: fresh herbs, sour cream, guacamole or queso fresco, a fresh acid-curdled Mexican cheese.

• Every Thursday we'll tweet the five ingredients from @irishtimeslife so you can have them ready for Friday. Email givemefive@irishtimes.com with your suggestions for recipes