Along the Way

I throw a palmful of garlic in the pan, where it hisses in a pond of olive oil. Reeking yellow onions follow. Then slivers of fresh serrano peppers, the daggers in a Southwestern cook's culinary arsenal. Finally, a mound of chorizo, Mexico's aggressor sausage. It's 6:30 in the morning, breakfast time.

Breakfast in America is the nail in the tire of life - breakfast elsewhere in America, that is. Scrambled eggs, bowls of limp gray stuff, cereals laced with such exciting ingredients as trisodium phosphate and butylated hydroxytoluene (go on, read the label). But not in our kitchen, not anymore. We're 80 miles from the Mexican border, where lies the inspiration for superior ways to launch the day - every day.

I began regularly cooking Mexican breakfasts six years ago after an invitation to Amalia Ruiz Clark's kitchen in Oracle, a town over the Santa Catalina Mountains from Tucson. Mrs. Clark, a grandmother and a tiny typhoon of energy, had long taught Mexican cooking in Tucson. As she whisked around her kitchen, she gave a running primer on Mexican breakfasts: "First, if you are in a Mexican home, you will get Mexican coffee. It's stronger than American coffee. Then there will be huevos rancheros and one or two salsas on the table. Or it could be that you will have chorizo scrambled with eggs, and warm tortillas on the side. A variation is eggs scrambled with fried tortilla chips, which is a kind of chilaquiles."

For our midmorning banquet, she indeed served huevos rancheros with her own flour tortillas and a likewise homemade sauce of tomato, onion, garlic, and incendiary chiltepin peppers. She lightly fried the eggs, laid them on the warm tortillas, smothered them with the salsa and cheese, then encircled all this with sliced avocados and cilantro.

A fruit cocktailliterally then appeared: fresh strawberries, grapefruit, and orange wedges in a generous splash of tequila, which helped ward off any alertness that might have been caused by the potent coffee.

This breakfast was stunning, a morning masterpiece of incandescent flavors and stinging piquancy. It also took a couple of hours to make, which is far more time than most of us have to lavish on breakfast. I simplify.

In my house, Mexican breakfasts evolve easily from yesterday's lunch or dinner. If we happened to have chili colorado, a red chili-spiked beef stew, I'll cocoon it in a large, thin tortilla with cilantro sprigs and cheese, and it becomes a breakfast burro. If I have leftover black-bean soup, I'll fold the beans into an omelet and season it with cayenne and fresh oregano leaves. If I have albóndigas, a savory meatball soup, I may simply reheat it and serve warm tortillas and pickled jalapeños on the side.

Albóndigas at sunrise is hardly a Mexican custom, but another soup, menudo,

WAKE UP! FIERY RECIPES THAT ENLIVEN A HO-HUM MORNING

is a traditional remedy for a too-long night out on the town. Since its main ingredient is beef tripe, the more squeamish might also consider it penance.

I also make an eye-opening Mexican variant on breakfast potatoes. I boil a few before bedtime, then, in the morning, I dice and sauté them with onions, garlic, and assorted green chilies. If any ham or chorizo lurks in the fridge, I toss it in. This is a terrific working person's breakfast, adequate to fuel a long day's cement mixing or a whole morning's writing. You must be thinking: not much of this sounds like anything your doc would want to hear. Indeed. Mine says that if I must indulge in bizarre breakfasts, how about some nice brown rice and zucchini sticks?

My rebuttal, based on empirical data carefully compiled firsthand, is this: look, I've been to Mexico. Every time I go, I notice many people who've attained old age. Obviously, all that hellish capsicum flushes the cholesterol out of one's system. Say, I can feel it working even as we speak.

You must also be thinking: how can you frag your own body like this at DAWN? Jalapeños for BREAKFAST?

Well, join me out on this limb for an analytical moment. We Anglo-Americans yet bear some weight of our lingering Puritan heritage. At some level, we equate fiery food with adventurism. We've come to embrace this at the evening meal; the night in our culture is the time for adventure.

But the morning meal launches the workday and sets its tone. Therefore, the food is reserved, not daring: corn flakes, muffins, bananas.

Being a writer, I don't want a banana to set the tone of my day. (Tripe soup may not be a good idea, either.) I need stimulation in the morning. I like a lingering sting on my tongue when I sit down at the computer so the words will fly out with a prickly edge of their own.

Being a foodie, I also hate to pass up the chance to eat something interesting just because it's morning. This is what's wrong with breakfast in America: we're in too great a rush to get on to the day's business, so we've come to see the first meal of the day not as a gastronomic opportunity but as refueling.

The universe of Mexican cuisine has many constellations, so home cooks need not feel limited to the familiar repertoire of this country's Mexican restaurants. Nor does a Mexican breakfast have to breathe fire.

For example, it's 10 in the morning, and I'm finishing this article on a tummy full of crab-andGouda enchiladas. Patty, my wife, said they were weird but not bad. Try a little nutmeg.