Texas Home Cooking

by Cheryl Jamison

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  Salsa Verde Picante

  This green salsa is sassy and sharp flavored, ideal when you want to warm up the crowd.

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  5 serranos

  1 cup chopped fresh tomatillos, skinned and blanched, or canned tomatillos, drained

  1 cup chopped prepared nopales (see [>]), fresh or canned, or more tomatillos

  ½ cup minced cilantro

  6 medium green onions, chopped (green and white parts)

  2 garlic cloves, minced

  1 tablespoon minced onion

  Juice of 1 lime

  ½ teaspoon salt

  Makes about 2½ cups

  Pierce each serrano with a fork, and hold it over the flame of a gas burner as if you are toasting a marshmallow. Or, if your stove is electric, pop the chiles under the broiler instead. When the skin is dark and blistered, place the chiles in a sandwich-size plastic bag to steam. As soon as the chiles are cool enough to handle, peel off the blistered skin. It's not necessary to remove all the skin—remnants will give a pleasant charred flavor to the salsa.

  Combine all the ingredients in a medium bowl. Chill the salsa, covered, at least 30 minutes for the flavors to develop. Serve it with chips, warm tortillas, or other dishes. The salsa keeps, refrigerated, for 3 to 4 days.

  Guacamole

  Most versions of guacamole in this country are a travesty to this old and honored Mexican dish. It deserves to be done right. Use only Hass avocados, the dark bumpy-skinned variety, which are buttery-rich. If you can't find truly ripe tomatoes, leave them out.

  2 large ripe Hass avocados

  2 small red-ripe tomatoes, preferably Romas or another Italian plum variety, chopped

  ½ cup chopped cilantro

  2 tablespoons chopped onion

  Juice of 1 lemon

  1 jalapeño, minced

  1 garlic clove, minced

  ½ teaspoon salt

  Makes about 1½ cups

  In a bowl, mash the avocado roughly, leaving a few toothsome chunks. Stir in the remaining ingredients. Serve within 30 minutes with chips, or as a garnish to other dishes.

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  Technique Tip

  Because guacamole darkens quickly, it is best made just before serving. The discoloration isn't harmful, but it's unappealing in appearance and flavor. Placing the avocado seed back in the mixture, as is often suggested, doesn't protect its emerald shade. If you have to hold the dip more than 30 minutes, place plastic wrap directly on its surface. The best way to cut down on last-minute preparations is to combine all the ingredients other than the avocados about an hour ahead of serving time. Just before eating, mash the avocados and fold in the remaining mixture.

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  Chile con Queso

  This delightful dip and sauce has suffered the indignity of being homogenized into a glop that's poured on ballpark nachos. A real chile con queso, studded with tomato and green chile, bears little resemblance to the pretender.

  1 tablespoon corn oil, preferably unrefined

  ⅓ medium onion, chopped

  1 garlic clove, minced

  1 medium tomato, chopped

  ⅓ cup chopped roasted green chile, preferably New Mexican or poblano, fresh or frozen

  ⅓ cup unsalted chicken stock

  2 cups (8 ounces) grated mild cheddar cheese

  Makes about 2 cups

  Warm the oil in a small, heavy saucepan over medium heat. Sauté the onion and garlic until soft. Add the tomato, green chile, and stock, and bring the mixture to a simmer. Sprinkle in the cheese, and stir until it melts.

  Serve the sauce immediately, or keep it warm in a water bath or chafing dish for up to an hour. Eat Chile con Queso with tostada chips or in other dishes such as Fried Cauliflower 'n' Queso ([>]) or Huevos con Queso ([>]).

  Mystery Man Tostada Chips

  An anonymous Mexican immigrant invented fried corn chips in San Antonio in the early decades of this century. He peddled them to restaurants around town and then in 1932 sold the business to Elmer Doolin for $100. The new owner named the chip a Frito, launching a company that became the giant Dallas-based Frito-Lag. In memory of the poor inventor, who returned to Mexico, make your own fresh chips, always better than any of the packaged brands.

  12 5- to 6-inch corn tortillas

  Oil, preferably canola or corn, for deep frying

  Salt or garlic salt to taste

  Makes 48 or 72 chips, depending on size, enough for 4 to 6 appetizer servings

  Pour enough oil into a high-sided heavy skillet (a wok works too) to at least 2 inches in depth. Heat the oil to 375° F. If the oil smokes before reaching the proper temperature, it cannot be used for this recipe. Make sure you have fresh oil.

  While the oil is warming, cut each tortilla into 4 or 6 wedges. Gently drop 6 to 8 wedges into the oil. When the chips are crisp and light golden, remove and drain them. Check the temperature again, and adjust the heat if necessary. Repeat the frying process with the remaining tortilla sections.

  Salt the chips, if you like, and serve them warm. Tostada chips can be kept for up to 2 days in an airtight container. Rewarm the chips, uncovered, in a 250° F oven before serving.

  Buñuelos

  Puffy morsels related to Indian fry bread, New Mexican sopaipillas, and New Orleans beignets, buñuelos are especially popular at Christmas time. They are a bit of a bother for home cooks, but once you master them you won't regret the trouble. If you have access to fragrant Mexican cinnamon, called canela, use it for the topping, which is often sprinkled on dry for everyday purposes and cooked down as a syrup for special occasions. The canela has a warm mellow flavor that complements the buñuelos beautifully.

  DRY TOPPING

  ¾ cup sugar

  2 teaspoons ground canela (Mexican cinnamon) or cinnamon

  SYRUP

  1 cup dark brown sugar

  1 teaspoon ground canela (Mexican cinnamon) or cinnamon

  2 cups water

  BREAD

  4 cups all-purpose flour

  1 tablespoon sugar

  2 teaspoons salt

  2 teaspoons baking powder

  ¼ teaspoon ground canela (Mexican cinnamon) or cinnamon

  1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon oil, preferably canola or corn

  1½ cups lukewarm milk or water

  Oil, preferably canola or corn, for deep frying

  Makes 12 to 74 buñuelos, approximately 7 inches wide

  For the dry topping, mix the canela and sugar together in a small bowl or jar. Set the mixture aside.

  If you prefer to make the syrup, combine the brown sugar and canela in a small, heavy saucepan. Add the water, and bring to a simmer. Let the mixture simmer until it thickens and forms a light syrup. Remove the pan from the heat, and set it aside. Rewarm the syrup, if necessary, before serving time.

  For the bread, sift together the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and canela into a large mixing bowl. Pour the oil into the dry ingredients, and mix with your fingertips to combine. Add the water and milk, working the liquids into the dough until a sticky ball forms.

  Lightly dust a counter or pastry board with flour, and knead the dough vigorously for 1 minute. The mixture should be "earlobe-soft" and no longer sticky. Let the dough rest, covered with a damp cloth, for 15 minutes. Divide the dough into 12 to 14 balls, about the size of golf balls. Cover the balls with the damp cloth, and let them rest for another 15 to 30 minutes (or refrigerate them for up to 4 hours).

  Lightly dust a counter or pastry board with flour, and roll out each ball of dough into a circle about ¼ inch thick. It's OK if your buñuelos come out shaped like the state of Texas or even Illinois, but you can trim them into more circular shapes if you're a perfectionist. To avoid toughening the dough, you will want to roll it out only once, so discard any trimmings. Cover the buñuelos with the damp cloth. Don't stack the dough circles, because they are likely to stick together.

  Pour enough oil into a high-sided, hea
vy skillet to measure at least 3 inches in depth. Heat the oil to 375° F. If the oil smokes before reaching the proper temperature, it cannot be used for this recipe. Make sure you have fresh oil.

  Gently drop the first buñuelo into the hot oil. After sinking in the oil briefly, it should begin to puff and rise back to the surface. Don't spoon oil over the top of the frying bread as this would cause the bread to balloon up too much. When the buñuelo's top side has bubbled and risen more or less uniformly, turn it over with tongs. Cook the buñuelo until it is just light golden, remove it with tongs, and drain it on paper towels. Sprinkle the buñuelo with the dry cinnamon-sugar mixture, or drizzle syrup over it. Repeat the frying process for the remaining rounds of dough, adjusting the heat as necessary to keep the oil's temperature consistent. When all the buñuelos are ready, serve them immediately.

  Variations: For anise-flavored buñuelos add 1 to 1½ teaspoons ground anise seeds to the dough.

  Some folks make a fast-food version of buñuelos by frying flour tortillas until crispy and sprinkling them with the cinnamon-sugar topping.

  Creamy Flan

  This cream-cheese flan may surprise you with its unusual tenseness and sinful richness. It bakes longer and at a lower temperature than most versions to achieve the proper texture.

  CARAMEL

  ¼ cup sugar

  CUSTARD

  1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk

  14 ounces milk (use the condensed milk can to measure)

  3 ounces cream cheese, softened

  4 eggs

  2 egg yolks

  1½ teaspoons vanilla

  Serves 8

  Preheat the oven to 325° F.

  For the caramel, set eight individual custard cups or an 8-cup soufflé dish within easy reach of the stove. Spoon the sugar into a heavy saucepan or skillet no larger than 1 quart. Cook over low heat, watching carefully as the sugar melts into a golden-brown caramel syrup. There is no need to stir unless the sugar is melting unevenly. When the syrup turns a rich medium-brown, remove the pan from the heat. Immediately pour about a teaspoon of caramel into the bottom of each custard cup, or pour all of it evenly in the soufflé dish. Tip the dish if needed to distribute the caramel. The hot syrup will harden almost immediately.

  To make cleanup easier, place the pan in the sink and run water in it at once. Stay clear of the steam that will rise as the water hits the hot metal surface.

  Put all the custard ingredients in a blender, and blend briefly until the mixture is smooth. Pour the mixture into the top pan of a double boiler. (If you don't have a blender, place the ingredients in the double boiler's top pan and beat with a whisk, or with a hand mixer at medium speed, for about 1 minute.) Heat the mixture over medium-low heat until it is warm throughout. Do not let the custard boil.

  Pour the custard into the cups or dish, and place them in a baking pan large enough to accommodate all of the cups with a little room for air circulation. Add warm water to the pan, enough to cover the bottom third of the cups. Bake at 325° F 70 to 75 minutes for the small cups and 80 to 85 minutes for the larger dish, or until the custard is firm and light golden brown on top.

  Remove the flan from the oven, and let it cool 15 to 20 minutes at room temperature. Cover the cups or dish, and refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight.

  Just before serving, take the cups from the refrigerator and uncover them. Unmold the flan by running a knife between the custard and the cup or dish. Cover each cup or the dish with a plate, and invert, giving the cup or dish a brief shake. The custard should drop to the plate. If not, try again. Serve the flan immediately. In the unlikely event you'll have leftovers, they can be kept for up to 2 days.

  Pralines

  Faintly perfumed with cinnamon, these creamy candies suffice as dessert after many a Tex-Mex meal.

  1½ cups sugar

  ¾ cup dark brown sugar

  ½ cup milk

  6 tablespoons unsalted butter

  1½ cups pecans, toasted at 300° F for 5 to 8 minutes

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  2 sticks ground canela (Mexican cinnamon) or cinnamon

  1½ teaspoons vanilla

  Makes a dozen large pralines

  Grease a 2-foot-long sheet of waxed paper. Set it on several thicknesses of newspaper to avoid ending up with wax on your table or counter.

  Combine all the ingredients in a heavy saucepan. Bring the mixture to a boil, and continue cooking over high heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture reaches the soft ball stage, 238° F to 240° F.

  Remove the pan from the heat, and continue stirring as the candy cools. When the mixture becomes creamy and cloudy, and the pecans remain suspended while stirring, remove the eanela. Quickly spoon the mixture onto the waxed paper, before the candy hardens in the pan. You can make pralines of any size, but most served in Texas are on the hefty side. For a dozen pralines, use about ⅓ cup of mixture for each. The pralines will set as they cool. Although best made the day they're served, the pralines can be kept, tightly covered, for several days.

  Championship Chili

  Chili-real chili—chili Texas style, must have strength to chin itself, even with a big rock in the bottom of the pot. It will have the authority of a Marine buck sergeant.... It will make a poet sing of rhapsodious harmony in thunder, or inspire an umpire to toss coquettish kisses to the third-base wolves. It is an all-purpose invigorator, a reliable antibiotic for melancholy, and a prime mover when one's world seems to stand on dead center. It is a panacea to man in want or woe.

  Joe E. Cooper, With or Without Beans; Being a compendium to perpetuate the internationally-famous Bowl of Chili (Texas Style) which occupies such an important place in modern civilization

  Since Joe Cooper kicked off the chili cult in 1952, the friends of Texas red have spun an elaborate web of words about the ethereal essence of one of the simplest ideas in human history: flavoring meat with chiles and spices. A delightful if farcical clan, they expend paper and passion with the abandon of a French bureaucrat on points barely worth whittling with a butter knife. If it weren't so silly, it wouldn't be nearly so much fun.

  The big question, discussed over and over, is who invented chili. The explanations range the globe and even beyond. One notion, reported at length by a prominent cookbook author, has a nun in seventeenth-century Spain learning the secret from American Indians during spiritual trances, when she would make incorporeal visits to the New World. A little closer to Earth, some speculate on a Mexican motherhood, a cowboy conception, and an accidental birth among Canary Islanders.

  We suspect everyone is right, except perhaps the supporters of the flying nun theory. This may sound like a cop-out on our part, but it's actually closer to heresy. We reckon the culinary inspiration required for chili is so slight, there were probably thousands of different inventors at different times and places. All anyone needed for a patent was an appetite, a poor piece of meat, and an address in the vast region where chiles and other ingredients grow wild, an area encompassing much of the Southwest and Mexico. On many a day you had a choice of stewing up some kind of chili or waiting for the stagecoach to deliver a pizza.

  The Savvy San Antonio Chili Queens

  However simple in concept, chili can be a "bowl of blessedness," as Will Rogers called it, when the cook knows what to chunk in the pot and how to ladle it out. This is where the fabled chili queens of San Antonio enter the story. When they established their reign on the old Military Plaza around 1880, they turned a makeshift meal into an identifiable dish and served it with a flair that ensured instant popularity and lasting renown.

  It must have been something like Mae West selling chicken tacos across the street from "the best little whorehouse in Texas." The chili queens hawked their goods from stands lining the plaza that was the nighttime hangout of every drifter, drinker, and rowdy in the wide-open San Antonio of the time. These were the customers, and the ladies competed for their favor by flirtation as well as fare. They might pin a rose over y
our heart, as one did to Stephen Crane, or hint at multiple ways to spice up your life. Whatever the means, the chili queens kept you coming back for more. By the turn of the century they had made chili a Texas institution.

  High Noon at the Hoedown

  From San Antonio, chili spread steadily around Texas and out to the farthermost corners of the country. It became a staple of the American Army diet well before World War I, and by the same time millions of housewives had learned to make it with commercial chili powder or at least serve it from a can.

  Chili found its true home, however, in cheap, hole-in-the-wall cafes that offered only bowls of red and cups of coffee, available together for a nickel or dime. Especially after Prohibition and the start of the Depression, these greasy spoons became popular male hangouts, places where a fellow could toss his hat on the counter and enjoy a manly meal for very little. As the customers and the hard times disappeared during World War II, the chili joints closed. Most were only a memory by the early 1950s, when a couple of nostalgic Dallas newspapermen began sounding a loud alarm about the encroaching demise of their favorite food.