Quesadillas

MAKE thin corn-meal pancakes six inches across. Dip one in hot chile sauce, lay on a plate and cover with raw onion chopped fine, grated cheese and stoned olives cut in half. Lay on this six other pancakes, each dipped in the chile sauce and covered with the onion, cheese and olives. Pour the remaining sauce over the top and set in a hot oven for a few minutes. Serve hot, cutting like layer-cake.

Tamales

TAMALES are a mixture of meat or fowl made hot with chiles and wrapped in corn-husks. In preparing the dough or nixtamal unless scalded meal is used for a substitute, it is necessary to prepare the shelled corn with lime-water. The Mexicans grind the corn prepared in this way, on the metate, and instead of a mortar use the molcajete and lejolote.

To prepare the corn, cover it with water, add the lime-water and boil until the husks slip off easily between the fingers, then wash in cold water until perfectly white. The lime-water is made by adding an ounce of common lime to a quart of water; stir well and let settle; when clear, drain off the water for use. One quart of lime-water prepared in this way will do for a pound of corn. For the wrapping, cut off the inside leaves of the corn-husks about an inch from the stalk end and boil in clear water until perfectly clean. Tear a few in narrow strips to use for tying the ends; dry the rest and rub them over with a cloth dipped in hot lard.

Farsanta

USE equal quantities of cold boiled chicken and veal, and half as much ham, all chopped. Mix together and moisten with good gravy. Season with salt, cayenne and a little chopped parsley. Make a dough by pouring a cupful of boiling water on a quart of fine, fresh corn-meal; work in a big lump of butter and add water until like biscuit dough. Have ready, as directed, a pile of the soft inner leaves or husks of green corn. Take a lump of dough about the size of an egg; pat it out flat, put a tablespoonful of the meat on it and roll for the inner husk. Then put on the outer husks with a thin piece of dough in each. Tie the ends and boil in water containing a few red peppers and a clove of garlic.

Genuino

BOIL three quarts of whole corn in ash lye until the hulls come off; soak in clear water until the lye is all out, then grind. Remove the seeds and veins from six chile peppers, boil soft and then put through a colander to separate from the skin. Boil a chicken tender and set aside half of the well-seasoned broth; the rest, with the chicken, thicken with part of the ground corn and add the pepper-pulp and three tablespoonfuls of fine marjoram. For the batter, take the remainder of the broth and ground corn and mix into it a table-spoonful of olive-oil; season with salt and make the dough just thick enough to spread. These proportions will make fifteen tamales.

Hacienda

GRIND two quarts of hulled corn through a meat-chopper and mix to a paste with two tablespoonfuls of melted butter, salt and cayenne. Divide a large, fat chicken and stew until tender, in water containing a clove of garlic and a pinch, each, of salt, comino seed and marjoram. Scald two dozen dry chiles, remove the seeds and veins, scrape the pulp from the skin, add this to the chicken-stew and thicken slightly with flour. Shape the corn-husks with scissors and soak in warm water for an hour. Remove, dry and rub each one with hot fat. Fill one with the chicken-stew, spread four others with the corn-paste; fold over the one containing the chicken and roll the others around. Tie the ends with a strip of the husk and steam for two hours.