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Some Kitchen Kinks: Mexican
Mexican Beef.
The Mexicans have a dish known as "Chili con carne" (meat with Chili pepper), the ingredients for which one would doubtless have difficulty in obtaining except in the southwestern United States. However, a good substitute for it may be made with the foods available in all parts of the country. The Mexican recipe is as follows:
Remove the seeds from two Chili peppers, soak the pods in a pint of warm water until they are soft, scrape the pulp from the skin and add to the water. Cut two pounds of beef into small pieces and brown in butter or drippings. Add a clove of garlic and the Chili water. Cook until the meat is tender, renewing the water if necessary. Thicken the sauce with flour. Serve with Mexican beans either mixed with the meat or used as a border.
In the absence of the Chili peppers, water and Cayenne pepper may be used, and onions may be substituted for garlic. For the Mexican beans, red kidney beans either fresh or canned make a good substitute.
If the canned beans are used they should be drained and heated in a little savory fat or butter. The liquid may be added to the meat while it is cooking. If the dried beans are used they should be soaked until soft, then cooked in water until tender and rather dry, a little butter or dripping and salt being used for seasoning or gravy. White or dried Lima beans may be used in a similar way.
Haricot of Mutton. 2 tablespoonsful of chopped onions. 2 tablespoonsful of butter or drippings. 2 cups of water, and salt and pepper. 1½ pounds of lean mutton or lamb cut into 2-inch pieces.
Fry the onions in the butter, add the meat, and brown; cover with water and cook until the meat is tender. Serve with a border of Lima beans, seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, and a little chopped parsley.
Fresh, canned, dried, or evaporated Lima beans may be used in making this dish.
Roast Pork with Cowpeas.
For this dish a leg of young pork should be selected. With a sharp knife make a deep cut in the knuckle and fill the opening with sage, pepper, salt, and chopped onion. When the roast is half done scar the skin but do not cut deeper than the outer rind. When the meat is nearly cooked pour off the excess of fat and add a quart of white cowpeas which have been previously parboiled or "hulled" and cook slowly until quite done and the meat is brown. Apple sauce may be served with this dish.
Meat Salads.
If Whether meat salads are economical or not depends upon the way in which the materials are utilized. in chicken salad, for example, only the white meat of chickens especially bought for the purpose and only the inside stems of expensive celery are used, it can hardly be cheaper than plain chicken. But, if portions of meat left over from a previous serving are mixed with celery grown at APPENDIX home, they certainly make an economical dish, and one very acceptable to most persons. Cold roast pork or tender veal-in fact, any white meat can be utilized in the same way.
Apples cut into cubes may be substituted for part of the celery; many cooks consider that with the apple the salad takes the dressing better than with the celery alone. Many also prefer to marinate (i. e., mix with a little oil and vinegar) the meat and celery or celery and apples before putting in the final dressing, which may be either mayonnaise or a good boiled dressing.
Meat with Eggs.
Occasionally eggs are combined with meat, making very nutritious dishes. Whether this is an economy or not of course depends on the comparative cost of eggs and meat.
In general, it may be said that eggs are cheaper food than meat when a dozen cost less than 1½ pounds of meat, for a dozen eggs weigh about 1½ pounds and the proportions of protein and fat which they contain are not far different from the proportions of these nutrients in the average cut of meat. When eggs are 30 cents a dozen they compare favorably with round of beef at 20 cents a pound.
Such common dishes as ham and eggs, bacon or salt pork and eggs, and omelette with minced ham or other meat are familiar to all cooks.
Four meat dishes and two short essays on kitchen economy, written when dried chilies and mutton were regional goods. The cooking is sound; most of what needs translating is shopping.
- The chili podsThese are whole dried pods, not fresh green chilies — ancho, guajillo or New Mexico chile are all sold now in any supermarket with a Latin aisle. Two pods to two pounds of beef gives a mild, brick-red sauce; four to six is closer to modern expectations.
- Scraping the pulpThe hinge of the dish. After soaking, scrape the softened flesh from the papery skin with the back of a knife and discard the skin, or blend the whole soaked pod and sieve it. Skins left in give a gritty sauce no amount of simmering will smooth.
- The cayenne substituteOffered here as a country-wide fallback, and it is not one. Cayenne supplies heat but none of the fruity body that makes the sauce; if dried pods are unavailable, a good pure chile powder rehydrated in the water is far nearer the mark.
- "Mexican beans"Most likely pinto beans, though the text itself offers red kidney beans, fresh or canned, as the substitute. Dried beans soaked until soft and simmered until tender and rather dry, as the recipe says, suit the two pounds of meat; no quantity or yield is given.
- Haricot of muttonThe dish name is usually traced to Old French harigoter, to cut into pieces, rather than to the bean, though the derivation is not settled; the Lima bean border is a happy coincidence. Mutton is a special order from a halal or Middle Eastern butcher; lamb shoulder, cut into 2-inch pieces, behaves the same and needs about 1½ to 2 hours covered.
- Cowpeas, and "hulled"Cowpeas are field peas — black-eyed peas, crowders, cream peas. The recipe's "hulled" is unclear: in Southern usage hulling cowpeas usually means shelling them from the pod, though here it is paired with parboiling. A quart dried is a large amount; a pound is plenty alongside a leg of pork.
- Roasting the porkNo temperature is given. A leg of young pork roasts at 325F, roughly 25 minutes per pound, to an internal 145F followed by a rest. The instruction to "scar the skin" is scoring the rind in a diamond pattern so the fat renders and crackles.
- The meat saladsCooked meat that has been out of the refrigerator, dressed and left to marinate at room temperature is the one thing here that needs modern care. Keep the meat cold, marinate it in the refrigerator, and serve within a day of cooking the roast.
- The egg arithmeticEggs at 30 cents a dozen against beef at 20 cents a pound is a period snapshot, not a rule. The underlying comparison — a dozen eggs weigh about 1½ pounds and carry comparable protein and fat — still holds and still works if you substitute today's prices.
The note that chili con carne's ingredients would be hard to find "except in the southwestern United States" suggests a page from the era before dried chilies moved through national distribution. Chili was then still a regional street food, most famously sold by the chili queens who set up tables in the plazas of San Antonio from what is generally traced to the late nineteenth century, and it reached the rest of the country first as an idea to be approximated with cayenne. The surrounding material — cowpeas with pork, Lima beans bordering a mutton stew, an argument about the relative cost of eggs and beef — belongs to the household-economy writing of the same period, in which pulses were promoted as an inexpensive way to stretch expensive meat. The recipe itself allows the beans to be either mixed with the meat or used as a border around the platter.