Food of Texas. Caroline Stuart
The many warm months make it possible to move the kitchen to the patio.
The word barbecue is commonly used to refer to the simple process of cooking outdoors. But the methods vary wildly, depending on whether the food is over a charcoal or a wood fire or on a gas grill. Grilling food over a hot wood fire is the oldest method of cooking. Nowadays, the wood fire takes the form of prepared charcoal chunks, or briquets. Grilling is a fast and effective way to cook, but little additional flavor is obtained, especially for quick cooking items. Smoking—that is, cooking in a pit barbecue or wood smoker—uses the heat and smoke of hardwood chips to cook meats slowly, gradually infusing them with the smoky taste real barbecue lovers demand.
The Mikeska brothers—or Barbecue Brothers, as they have come to be known—are meat-on-the-grill connoisseurs. Each of them owns their own barbecue restaurant, in six different areas of the state.
Every self-respecting outdoor cook has his or her own favorite method, temperature, times, rubs, sauces, woods, and specialties, the merits of which are often hotly debated. After the smoking process, some folks season their meat with a rub, a mixture of dried herbs and spices that is massaged into the meat before it is cooked, producing a wonderfully flavorful crust. Rub recipes are limited only by your imagination; sauces and mops are much the same. There are as many secret recipes for sauces as there are folks doing the barbecuing, but among the folks who prefer to add sauce, the tomato-based varieites predominate. Nearly everyone, however, agrees on the requisite accompaniments. Simply put, no barbecue would be complete without baked beans, coleslaw, and corn bread or that thickly sliced, crispy Texas toast. But a slice of white loaf bread will do just fine.
City Market Barbecue, located in Schulenburg, is famous for its jalapeño sausage, and is credited with its invention.
Year-round, you'll find good old-fashioned fun at Texas barbecue festivals or cook-offs. Just look for smoke, and follow your nose to the pits and pit meisters who start tending their smokers before daybreak. Soon, you'll join other barbecue fanatics, hundreds or even thousands, who travel great distances for the lip-smacking taste of long-cooked ribs, mopped chicken, highly seasoned sausage, and the piece de resistance, dry-rubbed brisket of beef.
Beef at its most basic—the hamburger—has had a secure spot in the hearts of Americans for years. Several states have claimed its invention, but Texas insists that it originated here in the 1880s, and Texan Fletcher Davis introduced it at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904. Regardless, Texans love their hamburgers, and burgers served in Texas can pack in as much as twelve ounces of ground beef. The ideal hamburger is grilled crisp on the outside and juicy on the inside. Piled high with layers of cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, and pickle, and anointed with mustard or mayonnaise, it makes a good meal with a casual Texas attitude.
Beef has a long history in Texas. In 1893, Amarillo's population was "between 500 and 600 people and 50,000 head of cattle." It is used in countless dishes. Indeed, some surveys tell us that hundreds of thousands of the popular specialty known as chicken-fried steak (battered and fried steak) are eaten every day in Texas. Tex-Mex food showcases beef in beef-filled tacos al carbon, and in El Paso the signature dish is shredded brisket salpicon salad.
The Lone Star State works its charm on visitors, many of whom regularly succumb to buying a pair of cowboy boots and tucking into a big steak dinner or rack of ribs before crossing back over the border. Competition among barbecue joints is fierce—you can't drive far in the state without passing one. They're usually modest places where you eat from paper or plastic plates and sit at wooden picnic tables in the shade. But beef and barbecue are subjects passionate enough to make hearts flutter. So who knows, maybe those visitors won't leave Texas after all. Many don't.
Barbecue pork ribs are the specialty of the day at the Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church Barbecue in Huntsville.
Around the State
Creative chefs are redefining Texas cuisine
by Dotty Griffith
Texas chefs are a wild bunch. Many wear cowboy boots in the kitchen. Some strum guitars when they're not working. But all take dead aim at preparing food that is as imaginative and as distinctive as they are. Texas first showed up on the nation's culinary radar screen in the 1980s, when Dean Fearing, Stephan Pyles, and Robert Del Grande spearheaded the Southwestern cuisine movement. Their paths have since diverged in recent years. Dean Fearing, with several books and a television series to his credit, continues as executive chef of Rosewood Hotels and The Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas. His signature Southwestern cuisine is sublime.
Stephan Pyles detoured from the "new Texas cuisine" road when he opened Dallas' "global seafood" restaurant, AquaKnox. Later he joined forces with Carlson Restaurants Worldwide (parent company of T.G.I. Friday's), which put him on the trail of expansion, soon opening Star Canyon in Dallas. Now he's part of the chef stampede to Las Vegas, where he has opened a second Star Canyon. Also busy with books and television, Pyles is developing a casual, relatively inexpensive Mexican taco bar concept, called Canonita.
A waitress at the Granite Cafe in Austin clears out of the proverbial kitchen when a pretend quarrel between chefs heats up.
Houston's Robert Del Grande, known for taking cowboy cuisine upscale, continues as the creative force behind the award-winning Cafe Annie. He also created an easygoing taco bar, Taco Milagro, and Rio Ranch Texas at the Hilton Westchase Hotel.
While these three chefs continue to be the state's best-known restaurant personalities, a whole new talented crew is on the rise. And although Houston and Dallas, the state's largest cities, continue to dominate the culinary scene, Austin, Fort Worth, San Antonio, and El Paso are turning out first-rate restaurants and chefs of note and acclaim.
In recent years, Dallas-Fort Worth has become the third largest market for prime beef, behind New York and Chicago. That means steak houses are nearly as common as cowboy boots on the local streets. Places like Del Frisco's, Al Biernat's, Bob's Steak and Chophouse, Chamberlains, The (Dallas) Palm, and Pappas Bros. Steakhouse (in both Dallas and Houston) are always at the top of the list whenever someone asks for a good spot to tuck into a big porterhouse.
Of course, beef is not all there is to Dallas dining. Danielle Custer of Laurels the Westin Park Central Hotel, and Doug Brown of Nana Grill, at the Wyndham Anatole, are two of the city's best young chefs. Custer was even recently named a Food and Wine magazine Rising Star. Their global reach for ingredients, techniques, and daring combinations—including African, Asian, and American flavors—makes their food a wonderful adventure that is garnering national attention.
Chef Kent Rathbun, a disciple of Dean Fearing, was the chef to watch during his stints at the Landmark Restaurant and at Seventeen Seventeen. He went on hiatus for a brief period but has returned as strong as ever with the opening of Abacus, a stunning setting in which he serves equally stunning Asian fusion cuisine to crowds of happy Dallas diners. And elsewhere in Dallas, Tom Fleming is bringing the luster back to the Riviera, which in the past was considered one of the great temples of local French cuisine. Chef Chris Ward is doing double duty, making waves at both The Mercury and Citizen. At the former he serves plates that marry New American food with Mediterranean cuisine, while his more recent venture, Citizen, is a Euro-Asian combination restaurant and sushi bar. But when folks are hungry for good, old Mex-Mex food, that is, classic Mexican dishes, they head for Javier's or La Valentina.
Who concocted the original margarita? It's reportedly named after the woman who invented it—and Margarita Sames (pictured left) will tell you she's the one. Will that be frozen, or on the rocks?
Just thirty miles west of Dallas, in Fort Worth, Grady Spears of Reata serves cowboy cuisine