Two ladies from the Argentine Embassy explain how to cook the famous "empanadas"

Cooking Argentine empanadas:

Among the charming methods followed by the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) in Lebanon, for drawing together people of different nationalities and for creating an atmosphere founded on understanding and mutual trust, is a small cooking circle which it holds at the Association's house in Ain el-Mreisseh every Tuesday morning, at which samples of the dishes of the different countries are presented. Every such country has a rich heritage of foods differ-ing from any other; "if we know something of it," as someone has said, "we know things about them" — the people.

A group of the ladies of the foreign embassies among us vol-unteers to unriddle the mysteries of the dishes, each undertaking a full demonstration and explana-tion of the sample dishes special

to her own country.

Lebanon opened the series, offering the foreigners "tabbouleh" and "stuffed cabbage" — whose stuffing serves for more than one dish — as purely Lebanese foods; and after Lebanon came

Venezuela with its eggplant purée, chicken with rice, and banana pudding; then India with its seasoned mutton; and Greece showed some curious dishes, such as the one they call (Youvarlabia Avgholemons), along with baked fish and kataifi; and Germany, apple cake and cabbage; and the British Embassy adopted kinds of cutlets and kidneys as dishes for which its country is noted..

I attended two of the meetings. At the first, some American ladies demonstrated American dishes — meat slices, potato salad, biscuits, and chocolate cake — with capti-vating speed; and at the second, Argentina presented the Argentine empanadas, in which the sweet and the salty mingle so gracefully, together with coconut cake and a kind of fillet (Filet). The ladies who did the demonstrating would bring from their homes all the utensils needed to make the dishes before the audience and cook them, and also the same dishes prepared beforehand, of which they offered the audience a taste.

And here is the recipe of the famous Argentine empanadas, which resemble the Lebanese dishes only a little; perhaps setting it down will be of use to those of our readers who are fond

A section of the audience attentively taking down the measures of the dish!