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Migas- Mexican Crumbs
From Fort Worth, Texas, comes this recipe which is a favorite among Camp Fire Girls in the southwest:
I DOZEN TORTILLAS 3/4 POUND CHEESE I ONION I SMALL CAN TOMATO SAUCE I TEASPOON SALT I CAN TOMATOES 1/2 CAN WESSON OIL I TEASPOON CHILI POWDER 2 GARLIC CLOVES Cut tortillas into twelve parts. Pour oil into pan and heat very hot. Drop pieces of tortillas into fat and, when crisp, drain on paper. Put 1/2 cup of hot fat back in pan (set other aside; do not throw away). Add onion and garlic which have been chopped fine together, to hot fat.
Brown well, add tomatoes, and tomato sauce and bring to bring to Season with chili powder and boil. Then add cheese. salt. Add tortillas chips. Stir and heat. Serve.
A skillet dish of fried tortilla pieces folded into a quick chile-tomato sauce with melted cheese. The instructions in the closing lines have been jumbled, but the order is recoverable: sauce, then seasoning, then cheese, then the fried tortillas last.
- Add the tortillas last, off the boilThe fried pieces should go in only when the sauce is thick and the cheese has melted, and be stirred just long enough to warm through. Longer and they slump into mush, which defeats the point of frying them.
- "1/2 can Wesson oil"Wesson was sold in cans of varying size in this period, so the quantity is genuinely ambiguous. Judge by the pan instead: about half an inch of oil in a heavy skillet, of which you return roughly half a cup for the sauce.
- Cans, unspecifiedNo sizes are given. An 8 oz can is the usual sense of "small can" for tomato sauce; for the tomatoes, a 14-15 oz can works, though cans of this period often ran larger. If the mixture looks thin, use the tomatoes drained.
- CheeseThree-quarters of a pound is a large amount for twelve tortillas and will bind the whole dish. A mild melting cheese is right here -- a longhorn-style Cheddar or Monterey Jack; shred it rather than cubing so it goes in evenly.
- Cutting the tortillas"Twelve parts" implies small pieces; wedges are the likeliest reading, though the text does not rule out strips. Corn tortillas, slightly stale, fry crisper than fresh ones.
- Chili powderOne teaspoon of the American blend, which is chile plus cumin, oregano and garlic -- not pure ground chile. Taste before adding more.
- Reserved oilThe instruction to save the frying oil rather than discard it is deliberate thrift; strain it once cool and it will keep for further frying.
- YieldServes four to six as a main dish, more as a side. It does not hold; serve straight from the pan.
Migas means "crumbs" in Spanish, and the name belongs to a whole family of frugal dishes across Spain, Portugal and Mexico built on stale bread or tortillas softened in fat. The Tex-Mex version, in which fried tortilla pieces are cooked into eggs or a tomato-chile sauce, is generally associated with San Antonio and central Texas kitchens, where day-old corn tortillas were too useful to waste. Here it appears under a Camp Fire Girls heading credited to Fort Worth: the dish needs one skillet, keeps its ingredients on a shelf, and stretches to feed a group. The naming of Wesson oil by brand is common in mid-century American community cookbooks, where trade names served as shorthand for the ingredient -- though the quantity here is still given in cans rather than cups.