Boil one chicken until the meat comes from the bones. Chop the neat fine
and moisten it with the liquor in which it was boiled. Boil six large
chili peppers in a little water until cooked so they can be strained
through a fine strainer, and add to this the chopped chicken, with salt
to taste and a little chopped parsley. Take corn meal and work into it a
lump of butter the size of an egg, adding boiling water and working
constantly until it makes a paste the consistency of biscuit dough. Have
ready a pile of the soft inner husks of green corn and on each husk
spread a lump of dough, the size of a walnut, into a flat cake covering
the husk. In the center of the dough put a teaspoonful of the chopped
meat with minced olive. On a large husk put several tablespoonfuls of
chopped meat with olives. Roll this together and lay on them other husks
until the tamale is of the size desired. Tie the ends together with
strips of fine husk and put in boiling water for twenty minutes. Either
veal or pork may be used instead of chicken.
Polenti, properly prepared, is a dish that requires much labor, and
scarcely repays for the time and exertion spent in its making. It
differs from scrapple in that the ingredients are mixed in a sauce and
poured over the mush instead of being mixed in the meal. In the New Buon
Gusto restaurant, in Broadway, they cook polenti to perfection, and when
it is served with cippino it leaves nothing to be desired. This is the
recipe: