When I was a kid, I remember taking a bite of mince meat pie wondering why this would be a dessert, and being very surprised at how yummy it was. I am sure it was some frozen store-bought version, but I thought it was just so amazing that they had made meat taste like fruit and spices. (Little did I know it had no meat whatsoever in it.) The mixture of fruit and meat with strong spices was brought to England from the Middle East during the crusades. It became a Catholic custom to eat it at Christmas, and during the English Civil War, was outlawed by Puritan leaders. According to an excellent wikipedia page on Mince Pie, in his History of the Rebellion, Marchamont Needham wrote…
Posts from the “Where food comes from” Category
Although much of this festival involves carnival rides, cotton candy, and other ubiquitous fair foods and activities, we did come home with a flat of some very sweet and delicious strawberries from Wheeler Farms. It would have been nice if more of the food booths (all of which are run by volunteers and benefit various community organizations) served homemade foods actually featuring local berries, but only a few did. We got some awesome preserves– Strawberry Fig and Strawberry Habanero– from Uncertain Farms. We walked around taking turns carrying this flat of berries. I had to use the berries right away (or else freeze them, which I did with half), so here are the results. I present this post in two parts: 1. Shortcake, and…
Tagged: ancho, food, guajillo, poteet strawberry festival, recipes, salsa, strawberry, strawberry shortcake
One of my new rules about sugar is not to eat sweets unless I make them from scratch. This excludes chocolate Easter bunnies, ice cream, and M & M’s. It’s important to put a few obstacles in front of sugar. Unfortunately, I discovered this lovely, simple, and indulgent treat. So put away the Cadbury eggs… If you’ve never made candy (like myself until now) these are a great thing to try, as they are a cinch to make. You do have to stand a around and wait a bit, stirring and watching. So many of the Mexican candies sold at the local eateries and shops are made of corn syrup, and they are so sweet and gooey I cannot bite into them. These beauties…
Tagged: brown sugar, candy, food, mexican candy, pecans, piloncillo, piloncillo candied pecans, recipe
One of the best things about living in the southern United States is fresh peas. Which are really beans. But don’t go calling them beans. Just try to get your hands on some and cook them, knowing they can be a main course, and a really nice break from meat or poultry. The season for these fresh peas is very short– so the next best thing to eating them in season is eating them fresh frozen– but I wouldnt be surprised if that is a regional option too. What is nice about having them frozen is all the fresh greens in season in the winter months– I paired these with some really good farmers market red chard. You can also find the peas dried. During the summer…
Categories: recipes, Where food comes from
Tagged: beans, chard, crowder peas, food, recipes, southern peas, zipper cream peas
San Antonio and New Orleans were founded at the same time, so many food traditions related to European and Catholic roots are hallmarks of cuisine in both cities. I love discovering the links between the two cities, and learning new recipes along the way. One of my favorite little cookbooks documents the cookery of the Old Ursuline Convent on Chartres Street. The Sisters were part of the Parish established in 1720 in what became the French Quarter. They performed many tasks– caring for the sick, teaching reading and writing and silk making. But by far their most lasting legacy is their adaptation of French cooking to local ingredients and techniques. They brought with them recipes for such things as pralines– a popular treat in the region of…
Tagged: calas, creole cooking, food, fritter, new orleans, recipes, rice, ursuline
In San Antonio, we eat flour tortillas, as previously noted. This is because when refined (or de-germed) flour was invented during the industrial revolution, it flooded the market as a cheap grain with a long– too long– shelf life. The original Mexican tortilla is a corn cake. I live about a mile from the oldest gristmill in Texas (Mission San Jose), which predates white flour by about 150 years. I also live near the C. H. Guenther Mill, where workers have been on strike since last spring. But clearly this is the type of strike that has few plays in the playbook– pretty depressing considering their union reps make almost six figures and yet dont seem to know what a fight-back looks like even if it came served…
Tagged: amaranth, aztecs, flour tortillas, food, food industry, mill workers, recipes, salsa, san antonio, strikes, watermelon radish, whole grain
“The orchards were loaded with fruit, and the forest trees showered nuts upon the ground. In every field were groups of persimmon trees, their branches bending under a burden of luscious fruit, which the frost had coated with sheeny purple outside, and made sweeter than fine wine within. Over all bent softly brilliant skies, and the bland, bracing air was charged with the electricity of life and happiness.” – John McElroy, The Red Acorn: A Romance of the War, 1883. There really is something magical about a fruit this luscious and sweet ripening in the cold season. Persimmons are a food many of you may have seen at high-end markets in places like California, or in recipes on fancy gourmet blogs. These are not the persimmons McElroy speaks of…
In the spring it is pretty easy to get a large variety of local produce at HEB (for those not familiar, South Texas has one grocery chain that dominates, with the exception of a Whole Foods, and a few Walmarts.) But the rest of the year, we are lucky to find anything other than cabbage, onions, mushrooms, and melon. Even at the fancy pants Central Market HEB, about 95% of their food is from California. I asked their cheese guy to show me any local cheeses in their huge cheese section, and he says “There just really arent a lot of local cheesemakers.” I don’t know what is worse, not having more than one local cheese on hand, or lying about why. This problem is…
Categories: recipes, Where food comes from
Tagged: chicken, greenlings, heb, local food, sweet potato greens
We just came back from another successful visit to the Rio Grande Valley—and quite a tour it was—Edinburg, Elsa, Weslaco, Harlingen, La Feria. We visited some of Tlacuache’s ancestors—recent and ancient. We pawed pumpkin empanadas, breakfast tacos, and other portable homemade goods. The outside of the empanadas in La Feria were lighter than any others I have had, so very tearable, and the filling was the most pumpkiny and least sweet. It was intense, earthy, and delightful. The food of South Texas and the region of the border known as the Rio Grande Valley, (RGV or just “The Valley” to locals) is a regional cuisine best understood by forgetting most of what you have ever heard about Tex-Mex. The term has been widely misused,…
The true cherry. For those readers in Oregon, the old world has you beat this time. Your Maraschino are imitations of something much more precious. Something made without corn syrup and artificial colors. Even the “natural Maraschino” you produce are not true to the name. I have stumbled upon genuine Marasca cherries, in Luxardo liqueur. As black as an olive, as sweet as they ought to be (not overly), and so rich with the flavor of something in its second form– the sweet-tart flame of its past life flickering across our tongues. The texture is also like an olive– firm but quickly devoured. That is, after sipping my new favorite cocktail, The Montserrat. Like a martini, but lost in the Chihuahuan desert, or the…
Categories: restaurants, Where food comes from
