How to Make Sweet Potato, Sage, and Fried Egg Tacos

Sometimes I start with an end goal in mind when I'm cooking. I'll scour the city, make orders online, send email requests to far off family members for overnight deliveries of exotic ingredients, or smuggle illicit spices through customs in order to get that perfect dish. Other times the ingredients drive the process—those pumpkins or peas or [insert seasonal vegetable X here] at the farmers market just look too good to pass up.

Occasionally, this latter type of cooking comes from an entirely self-imposed situation. Such has been the case for the last few months since discovering that several world-class, hand-made fresh corn tortillas are available for a pittance within a five minute walk from my house. Right now, what used to be the cheese drawer in my fridge has officially become the leftover tortilla drawer—a sort of museum of all the local versions I've been trying of late. (For the record, La Tortilla Factory's blended corn and wheat tortillas are my favorite non-mom & pop brand as of this writing.)

What does a drawerful of tortillas and a good knowledge of how to properly reheat them mean? It means tacos, tacos, tacos. They're the perfect quick and easy meal. Tacos for dinner. Tacos for lunch. Tacos for breakfast. Tacos with meat. Tacos with fish. Tacos with vegetables. Let's just say that my home kitchen puts our taco guide through its paces.

My favorite batch in recent memory? Sauteéd sweet potatoes. If there's anything I've learned about tacos over the years, it's that simply shoving a tasty filling into a warm tortilla doesn't necessarily make for a great taco. Toppings and condiments play an important role, offering textural contrast, extra moisture, and brightness.

With these tacos, it starts by adding a big handful of chopped fresh sage leaves to the sweet potato cubes as they sauté in a skillet in olive oil. Sweet potatoes and sage are an unbreakable marriage in my book (though they do have one of those rare healthy open relationships and allow each other the occasional dalliance on the side). I also wanted this recipe to be quick, which meant not having to make a fancy salsa. Instead, I did what I often do when faced with a dish that needs a quick sauce: I added a soft-fried egg.

When broken, the yolk coats the sweet potato nicely. All it needs is a dash of hot sauce (I've recently taken to the lightly smoky garlicky flavor of Tapatío) and a drizzle of Mexican crema (a mixture of sour cream thinned out with milk or heavy cream works if you can't find it). Thinly sliced radishes and some roughly chopped fresh cilantro finish it off.

This combo helped me plow through about a dozen tortillas, but I swear, those tortillas are multiplying in there...