tamale pie

Casserole actually, on the order of something like a lasagna, Mexican style. There's probably as many ways to do this as there are cooks. I made mine with things that I had on hand at the moment the impulse hit. It helps to begin by putting together a few mixtures then stacking the mixtures in a casserole dish. At the time, I had;

· Hatch green chiles, frozen
· Hamburger patties, preformed and pre-flavored with Worcestershire sauce salt and pepper
· Jimmy Dean™ sausage
· masa herena
· carry-over beans and rice
· cheddar and Provolone
· canned diced tomatoes
· lard and butter
· diced onion
· crushed and chopped garlic
· cumin

You could probably take all that, throw it into a bowl, mix it all up and come close, but let's at least try to have a little class.

Masa mixture, this will be the "crust" of your pie: lard and butter melted in microwave, 1 cup hot water, add enough masa flour by the tablespoon until you get the consistency you want. Sort of loose dough. Cover it and let it sit while you prepare the other mixtures.

Prepare the filling. Here, I used two ground beef patties and two small sausage patties. It could be anything actually, chicken works well, so does pork. Pork chili would be excellent. I mixed in 1/2 diced onion, 2 crushed and diced garlic cloves, a can of tomato, and half the Hatch chiles. That turned out to be a substantial amount of filling, more than I needed for my 1/2 size casserole dish which is the size of a bread pan.

Prepare a separate bean mixture. This step wouldn't be necessary, I just felt like it because I had it on hand. I also had frozen corn so I mixed them together with the remaining half of the Hatch chiles. This was intended to be be another layer.

Grated cheese

Here's where the fun starts if you're not having it already. Make layers with your prepared ingredients and stick the resulting pile into an oven for about half an hour to toast it all up. Remove it to add a sprinkling of cheese on top and return it to the oven for about 10 minutes to melt the cheese and finish cooking the whole casserole. Then serve. Quickly, then: