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Migas
Soak slices of stale bread and squeeze dry. Put olive oil or drippings drippings in a frying pan and when boiling hot drop in an onion chopped fine, a little ground chile and a pinch of sweet marjoram. Lay the slices of bread in this with plenty of fresh cheese (preferably goats' cheese), finely broken, and fry for about ten minutes. Remove to a hot plate; cover with grated cheese, stoned ripe olives and chopped hard-boiled egg.
A frying-pan dish of soaked stale bread, aromatics and cheese, written for a cook who already knows what the pan should look like. The points below fill in what the text assumes.
- Soak in whatThe original does not say, and both traditions exist: plain water for a lean version, milk for a richer one. Dip the slices briefly rather than letting them sit, then press firmly between the hands or in a clean towel — sodden bread will steam instead of frying.
- The bread mattersUse a dense, chewy loaf several days old, cut about half an inch thick. Modern soft sandwich bread collapses to paste the moment it meets liquid.
- "Boiling hot" fat"Boiling hot" fat means the oil is shimmering and on the point of smoking; in modern terms that is somewhere around 350-375F, though the original gives no temperature. Drippings means rendered beef or pork fat; the recipe names olive oil first, and olive oil is the usual fat for this dish.
- Ground chileNot chili powder, which is a blend containing cumin and oregano. Use pure ground dried red chile — ancho or New Mexico — and start with half a teaspoon for four slices.
- Fresh cheeseA young, mild, crumbling cheese that softens without running: queso fresco, a fresh goats' cheese, or farmer cheese. Aged goat cheese is far sharper than what is meant here and will dominate.
- Ten minutes is for one side turned onceTen minutes, but the original does not say whether the slices are turned. In practice, fry until the underside is browned and crisp, three or four minutes, then turn. Much beyond about ten minutes total and the bread hardens through.
- YieldFigure two slices per person as a light main, one as a side. The garnish of grated cheese, olives and chopped egg should go on at the table, while the bread is still crisp.
Migas is Spanish for "crumbs," and the dish is one of the oldest answers to the question of what to do with bread too stale to eat — found across Spain and Portugal, carried into Mexico and the American Southwest, and often said to have been cooked by shepherds and field workers long before it reached cookbooks. The ground chile, ripe olives and goats' cheese point to a Southwestern or Californian source rather than an Iberian one. Note that this is the bread-slab form of migas; the version better known in Texas today, with tortilla pieces scrambled into egg, is a related but distinct descendant of the same thrift.