On Food & Culture
“Machacado Con Huevo” uses the basic element, salt (sodium choride), to dry and preserve meat. It’s a traditional breakfast dish based on a technique that we inherited from our native Texas ancestors who handed it down to each subsequent generation. Over thousands of years, a …
Inviting, delicious, eye-opening. There was mouth-watering picadillo, nopalitos salad, salsa ranchera, crema mexicana, shark empanadas and much more. The creamy flan Napolitano was luscious. Pot-luck never tasted so good. But it was the stories and memories that that made this recipe swap dinner special. The …
Returning to Houston from Galveston Island, “Gringo’s” caught my eye. The sign is dazzling. It also exquisitely illustrates the aspect of Tex-Mex food about which I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. Restaurants cook Tex-Mex dishes because we seek identity, discovery of who we are. …
Verdolaga, purslane in English, is the indigenous Texas Mexican herb that I love to serve for company. It is my “go to” recipe for a delicious green side dish that goes with absolutely anything. Verdolaga grows plentiful for most of the year in central, southern …
Chicken poached in a garlic-cumin broth is from Hidalgo, in the central Eastern region of Mexico, the homeland of the great Toltec culture. Toltec art and the huge monuments are well-known and iconic of MesoAmerica, but a lesser known fact is that the region has …
In Chicago I presented a slide show about how cooking is memory, relationship and ethics. I also conducted a cooking workshop to demonstrate how to make gorditas, working with dried chiles, cactus, corn masa, and pinto beans. No lard, thank you. It was a 4-hour …
“Nacho’s” is an original Texas Mexican (not Tex-Mex) dish that was created by culinarian, Ignacio Anaya (nickname Nacho) in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, across the river from Eagle Pass, Texas. It is a thoughtful, beautifully balanced combination of just three ingredients, corn chips, longhorn cheese and …
Riced cauliflower is an excellent “go to” recipe that I recommend you integrate into your basic home cooking reportoire. I sometimes mix it with diced tomato and chile serrano, making “arroz de coliflor a la Mexicana,” and it makes a great buffet dish. This recipe …
Potato and egg breakfast tacos were my lunch staple all through grade school. My mom would make them for all us kids, and send us off to school with these wonderful tacos wrapped inside a brown paper bag. By lunch time they were cold, but …
Mazapán Mexican candy is a cousin of Marzipan, which is made with almonds and sugar. Marzipan originates in Asia and the Middle East. Mazapán is distinctly Mexican in that it replaces the almonds with peanuts, which are of Latin American origin. We add corn, which …