Corned beef and scrambled eggs

I want to take a break from cooking and need a change from vegetable dishes so I plan to fix something simple tonight: canned corned beef and scrambled eggs, basically, breakfast for dinner as a serving of corned beef, rice and a cooked egg is a common breakfast dish in the Philippines.

The variety of available canned foods found here is, well, not what most ex-pats are used to in their home countries. You can find corned beef, carne norte (a variety of corned beef that's chopped up finer and contains more juice), Vienna sausages, tuna in various flavors, sardines in assorted flavors, pork and beans, SPAM, something called "beef loaf" which is a finely-ground meat product of some sort, plus a few favorite Filipino foods such as lechon paksiw and sisig. You can sometimes find things like canned soups (and not very many flavors of these: cream of mushroom, mainly) and vegetables in the regular old #2 size cans, but these are usually located in the Imported Foods aisle of a supermarket and they're rather expensive. You probably won't find very many canned convenience foods (meals in a can), such as Chef Boy-Ar-Di products, canned beef stew, tamales, "Chinese food" or lima beans with ham. No Spaghetti-Os!

The canned corned beef you find here is different than that in the US: chunkier and more flavorful. The cans are small, round 155 gram size rather than the larger, squarish cans that are opened with a key. You open these with a regular can opener. I actually prefer carne norte, which is both cheaper and tastier, but my wife likes corned beef because it has larger chunks of meat. Anyway, it's an easy and nourishing meal to eat occasionally if you want to take a break from vegetables.




Ingredients:

2 cans of corned beef or carne norte

4 large or 6 small eggs

1 large Philippines-sized onion (which are smaller than those found in the West: you can use half of a medium onion), peeled and chopped

8 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped

One ripe tomato (again, smaller here in the Philippines: use a Roma tomato or equivalent), chopped

Oil for cooking

3 to 4 teaspoons water

Salt and pepper to taste

Optional: small packet of Magi brand Magic Sarap seasoning mix (a blend of granulated chicken bouillon, onions, garlic, salt, MSG and other seasonings)


Instructions:

Prepare vegetables as per above.

Break the eggs into a small mixing bowl and beat well with a fork to blend the yolks and whites. Blend in the water. Mix in the salt or Magic Sarap, and pepper. Mix well then set aside.

Heat a little oil in a non-stick skillet over medium heat. When hot, add half of the onion and garlic, and the tomato. Cook for around 2 minutes until the onion and tomato begin to get tender then add the eggs, first spreading the vegetables evenly in the pan so they're not all clumped together: that way they'll be more or less evenly distributed throughout the finished eggs.

Cook until the eggs "set": that is, until they start becoming solid on the bottom. Push the eggs toward the middle of the pan on all sides, tilting the pan to let the runny, uncooked eggs contact the hot pan so that portion can get cooked too. Repeat until all of the eggs have set and are cooked, but be careful not to overcook or your eggs will be too dry: they should be cooked yet somewhat moist. Remove and set aside.

Add a dash more oil to the pan then add the remaining onion and garlic mixture. Cook as per above, until the onion starts to get tender. Add the corned beef, stir and heat through. Season with ground black pepper to taste.

Serve with hot cooked rice. Serves two.


Note: incidentally, the instructions for cooking the eggs (omitting the onion, garlic and tomato if you prefer) are how to make perfect scrambled eggs. Note that you  don't stir the eggs during cooking: that tends to make them stick to the pan and dries them out too much. The added water makes the eggs fluffier: you can substitute a dash of milk if you like.