Cookbook Review: The Tex-Mex Cookbook

As detailed elsewhere, I’m not super concerned about “authenticity”.  Good food, cooked with heart and shared with friends, can be high-brow or low-brow and it just doesn’t matter. Robb Walsh seems to share my views.  He’s a Houston-based food writer, was my favorite food editor at The Austin Chronicle, and *founded* the Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival in 1991.

My friend Audra recommended this one to me, and this is the first cookbook I’ve ever read cover-to-cover.  It’s a narrative as well as a cookbook, and the story stretches from the San Antonio chili stands of the late 1800’s to today.  It traces the culinary roots of what’s now known as Tex-Mex through the border culture dynamism that exists anywhere two civilizations rub up next to eachother (and where one is not destroyed utterly).

And it’s anything but highbrow.  There are recipes for Chili Mac and Frito Pie in here.  Recipes from El Chico, Molina’s, Chuy’s, Ninfa’s, El Azteca, and Lady Bird Johnson.

It’s a good source for basics, in the book I finally found a chorizo recipe that tastes like I remember it, and the recipes for tamales, tortillas, salsas and migas are gold.

If you’re interested in cooking Mexican(ish) this would be a great addition to your cookbook library – and frankly the recipes and ingredients are a lot more accessible to gringos than the elaborate recipes in Kennedy or Bayless.  I love to read The Cuisines of Mexico, but I’m more likely to cook something found in The Tex-Mex Cookbook.