Chapter 10
Section 10 of 101 Mexican Dishes. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Betty B. 101 Mexican Dishes by Mae E. Southworth. Olla podrida.
Ajo queso. Boil three Spanish peppers and pass the pulp through a sieve. Fry a small onion and a clove of garlic, chopped fine, in hot olive oil. Add the pepper pulp, a small piece of butter, salt, a dash of Tabasco, and a cupful of grated cheese. Stir as it heats and add thin cream until it will pour nicely.
Serve immediately on hot toasted biscuits. Almeba. Put two cupfuls of brown sugar in a saucepan. Add a half cupful of milk and boil gently until a little, put in cold water, can be rolled into a ball between the fingers. Stir steadily while boiling.
Add a lump of butter the size of an egg. When this is melted, remove from the fire and beat until the mixture begins to look creamy and slightly granulated. Stir in quickly a pound of English walnuts, shelled and broken. Beat for a moment and then turn into buttered tins to harden. Azucarillo.
Cream a quarter of a cupful of butter with a half cupful of powdered sugar. Add gradually a quarter of a cupful of milk and seven-eighths of a cupful of flour. Flavor with vanilla and spread very thin with a broad knife on a buttered, inverted dripping pan. Sprinkle with blanched and chopped almonds, crease in three-inch squares, and bake until delicately browned. While warm, cut the squares apart and roll slightly.
Blanquillos. Chop two large onions fine and fry in hot olive oil. Add two large peeled and sliced tomatoes and a teaspoonful of ground dry chili. Cook twenty minutes and just before serving, put in a half dozen hard-boiled eggs cut in quarters. Pour over toast.
Cafe con leche. Set the drip coffee pot where it will keep hot. Put a cupful of ground coffee into the strainer and pour two tablespoons of boiling water in the top. In five minutes, pour in a little more water, adding a little at a time until you have used four cupfuls, but never pour in water a second time until the grounds have ceased to bubble.
In serving, fill the cup only half full of coffee and add the rest in boiling milk. On top, put a tablespoonful of hot cream. Cuyollo guisado. Get ten of the Mexican tortillas, cut them in small pieces, and fry in hot lard. In another pan, fry a large onion and a clove of garlic chopped fine.
Just as it browns, add the fried tortillas and brown together for a few minutes. Then add a pound and a half of mild cheese grated and a cupful of chopped olives. When all are fried together nicely, season with salt and pour over it a chili sauce and put in a deep dish and bake for fifteen minutes. Serve as soon as taken from the oven.
Emparedado. Beat into a cupful of cold mashed potatoes, one of thick sour cream or milk, and add two beaten eggs. Sift into a cupful of flour, a half teaspoonful each of soda and salt, and beat the slightly into the potatoes and milk. Drop the batter in big spoonfuls on a hot griddle and bake on both sides.
Put grated ham, chopped olives, and a little parsley on one cake and place the other on top to form a sandwich. Serve hot and pass with the chili sauce. Encelada. Slice two Spanish onions in thin rings, cut two fresh chilies across in rings, removing the seeds, and slice three ripe firm tomatoes.
Put these in alternate layers in a shallow bowl, sprinkle parsley and breadcrumbs over the top, and cover with a dressing made of three parts oil to one of vinegar, seasoned with salt. Serve ice cold. Llenar Mexicano. Cut a pound of mild cheese into tiny bits.
Prepare a cupful of olives, stoned and chopped fine. One large onion, chopped fine, and ten chili prunes, that is the dried shells of the chilies without the seeds, toasted and crushed fine. To these, add a pinch of marjoram, crushed fine, a tablespoonful of olive oil, and a teaspoonful of cider vinegar. Mix all well together, let stand an hour, and then put between thin slices of bread and butter.
Mexicano Americano. Cream a quarter of a pound of butter, adding by degrees the beaten yolks of six eggs. Beat together until thick and creamy, then sift in ten ounces of flour, stirring all the time. Whisk up the whites of the six eggs and gently but thoroughly stir these in, adding sufficient milk to make a medium thick batter.
Flavor with vanilla. Bake in waffle irons, well greased and hot. Butter each waffle as it comes from the iron and dust with fine sugar, mixed with a little powdered cinnamon. Mijas. Soak slices of stale bread and squeeze dry.
Put plenty of fresh lard in a frying pan, and when boiling hot, put in an onion, chopped fine, some ground chili, and a pinch of sweet marjoram. Lay the slices of bread in this with plenty of fresh, crumbled goat's cheese, and fry for ten minutes, stirring to cook on all sides. Remove to a hot plate and cover with fresh grated cheese,
stoned ripe olives, and hard boiled eggs, chopped fine. Molette. Beat together a cupful of cold boiled squash, one of milk, and two eggs. Sift together a cupful of cornmeal, one of flour, a half teaspoonful of salt, and two of baking powder. Mix all together into a smooth batter and bake on both sides in little cakes on a hot griddle.
Serve hot with sugar sprinkled on each. Pan releno. Chop onion very fine and mix with mild cheese, cut in small pieces in the proportion of one-third onion to two-thirds cheese. Add a few ripe olives, stoned and cut in half, and a pinch of oregano. Mix this together with a dressing made of oil and vinegar, two-thirds oil and one-third vinegar.
Cut off the top of a small loaf of French bread the long way, dig out the center, and fill with the cheese mixture. Put the crust back on top and cover with the mixture and bake in a rather quick oven. Polenta. Into three pints of boiling water, put a teaspoonful of salt and a tablespoonful of butter. When boiling, sift in slowly, stirring constantly, about a pint of Indian meal and boil a half hour.
Half ready, hot, a cupful of good gravy and one of tomato sauce made with chili. Put a layer of the cooked Indian meal in the bottom of a baking dish, then the sauce and gravy, sprinkled with a little grated cheese. Fill the dish with these alternate layers and bake for half an hour. Serve hot with a little extra chili. Pueblo Cilo.
Saute little half-inch squares of chicken or calf's liver in olive oil over a brisk fire when nicely browned. Add some thick tomato sauce and some leftover gravy. Into this, cut up half-inch links of cooked macaroni, mushrooms, and a few olives cut small. Season highly and work in a big lump of butter. Serve on toasted squares.
Tortas Serrano. Beat six eggs together until light. Add a half cupful of flour and an onion, chopped fine. Stir in lightly one teaspoonful of baking powder and a pinch of salt. Cut a half pound of mild cream cheese into thin squares and add to the egg mixture.
Half ready, a kettle of hot lard. Take up one piece of cheese at a time with as much of the egg mixture as the spoon will hold and drop into the fat and fry until brown. Serve with hot chili sauce. Tortilla de huevos. Chop a small clove of garlic and fry in olive oil.
Add a cupful of mushrooms, cut small, and a half cupful of stewed tomatoes. Season with salt and pepper. Make a plain omelet and just before folding it over, spread this on top. Serve immediately. End of section 10.
End of 101 Mexican Dishes by Mae E. Southworth.
