Deep in the Heart of Texas: Robb Walsh

Whenever I see an unlicensed shade-tree barbecue stand along the side of a Texas farm-to-market road, I think of history's first barbecue salesmen -- those famous outlaws, the buccaneers.

In the French West Indies, the word for a barbecue grill is boucan (from Tupi, a Brizilian language). Boucanee means smoked meat. Hence, "buccaneer" is derived from the French word for "barbecuer." The buccaneers were a ragtag crew consisting mainly of French and English outlaws and escaped slaves. They hid from the Spanish on the island of Tortuga off the northern coast of Hispaniola in the mid-1600s. Although they would later be known for their seafaring exploits, their original business was smoke-cured meat.

The buccaneers hunted the wild cows and pigs left behind the failed Spanish settlements on the island of Hispaniola. They smoke-cured the meat and sold it to the passing ships. Hunted themselves by the Spanish, the buccaneeers banded together for their own protection. Eventually they gave up on the meat business and went to sea. soon they discovered that capturing Spanish vessels by surprise attack was a lot more lucrative than chasing wild pigs. Before long, the buccaneers came to be known more as fearless seamen than as barbecue purveyors. But many would argue that it was in their first occupation that they made their most significant contribution to humanity.

Like the buccaneers, Texas barbecue joints are forever at odds with the authorities. Barbecue is, by definition, a primitive cooking process. The health laws in many Texas counties do not allow restaurants to cook outdoors. Many barbecue joints build tin roofs, screened porches, and other elaborate facades to bring the outdoor cooking indoors (at least technically). In outlaw tradition, the best barbecue generally comes from the joint that is in the most trouble with the health department.

Legends of Texas Barbecue Cookbook: Recipes and Recollections from the Pit Bosses by Robb Walsh

If you are interested in the history of American cooking, then Robb Walsh is a must read.

If you are interested in the history of Texas cooking, then Robb Walsh is a must read.

If you are interested in Texas cooking now as well as recipes on doing this yourself ... well you get the point.

Must read!

Yes, I'm a fan.

He has covered barbecue, Tex-Mex, and cowboy cooking with historical information, oral tradition, restaurant information, and current day cooking and tastes. He does his own research, takes his own photos when those he can find won't do, and makes it all so easy to read that you don't feel as if you are absorbing history.

Excerpts tend to speak better for his cookbooks than I can do.

The Tex-Mex Railway

"Tex-Mex" first entered the language as a nickname for the Texas and Mexican Railway which was chartered in 1875. Newspaper railroad schedules used the abbrreviation "Tex. Mex." for the rail line which ran from Laredo to Corpus Christi.

The Oxford English Dictionary has cited a 1941 Time magazine quote as the first use in print, but several earlier citations appear in small-town newspapers. An earlier use of the hyphenated form is found in this May 23, 1922, citation from the Mexia Evening News (Mexia, Texas): "... the new town of Marindo City on the Tex-Mex Railway, where oil is loaded ..."

The term came to be used across the U.S. to describe people of Mexican ancestry in Texas as in this item from The Gastonia Daily Gazette (Gastonia, North Carolina) May 29, 1926: "One year the offering went to the Tex-Mex school, the School for Mexicans on the Texas side." On September 19, 1928, the Newark Advocate (Newark, Ohio) published this definition: "Q. What are Tex-Mex? A. Texas-born Mexicans."

The Tex-Mex Cookbook: A History in Recipes and Photos by Robb Walsh

But what about the recipes I can hear you saying. What about cooking from these books?

Good question and, sadly, all my appreciation comes from reading the books as I have been doing basic subsistence cooking lately. However, I feel myself shaking that mood off and plan to make this recipe soon. For more concrete appreciation, check out Homesick Texan who not only cooks from these books but has actually spent time cooking with Robb Walsh!

Sweet Potatoes Baked in Cane Syrup

(from The Texas Cowboy Cookbook)

How long you bake it depends on how wet the potatoes are, Mama Sugar Sanders cautions. If the sweet potatoes give off a lot of water, increase the baking time until the liquid is reduced.

Serves 8

2 tablespoons butter
3 pounds sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch slices
1 cup cane syrup
1/2 cup sugar

Preheat the oven to 350. Butter a medium baking dish.

Layer the sweet potato slices in the prepared baking dish. Pour the cane syrup over the top and dot with the remaining butter. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove the baking dish from the oven and tun with a spatula so the top slices are on the bottom and the bottom slices are on top. Sprinkle with the sugar and return to the oven. Bake for 20-30 minutes more, until the juices have thickened into a syrup. Remove the pan from the oven and press down on the potato slices with a spatula so they are submerged in the juices. Allow to cool for 30 minutes before serving.

"I have been wanting to ask you ..."

My family and I saw the seasons pass in the valley. The children went to the local school, where they learned along with the three R's how to trap and skin rabbits, how to stake pastures to hold the forest's hogs, and how to mend a hand-drawn threshing sled made to a design unchanged since the Iron Age. With Maria's advice and under her tutelage we acquired a donkey, a kitchen garden, and a household pig -- the last, I stipulated, only if Maria helped me at its final hour. The pig thrived mightily on the scraps from my kitchen. Finally, on a late October day deemed suitable, the moon being in the right quarter and the pig having been fattened to the correct weight on acorns from the surrounding cork oaks, Maria's husband and brother-in-law arrived at sunrise to prepare for the dreaded event. Soon afterwards Maria, her cousins, and her mother appeared to help with the kitchen labor. The children were packed off to school early, and all day we worked salting hams, seasoning sausages, stuffing black puddings, and spicing chorizos. That evening, as she prepared the traditional celebration meal of chicharros, pork skin fried crisp; kidneys in sherry; and garlic-fried liver which follows a country matanza (butchering), Maria finally asked the question which made me embark on this book.

"Tell me," she said, her voice sympathetic as she leaned over the table and restored control of the sausage casing to my clumsy fingers for the fifth time, "I have been wanting to ask you ever since you and your family arrived, but I did not wish to seem inquisitive. Please forgive me, but did your mother teach you nothing at all?"

The Old World Kitchen: The Rich Tradition of European Peasant Cooking by Elisabeth Luard

That experience launched Elisabeth Luard on a voyage of discovery that lasted for 25 years as she and her husband moved around Europe. They would connect with locals wherever they went and she would begin learning about peasant traditions with food.

This book is a treasure not only for those who are interested in food history as I am, but also for those interested in good cooking. Luard presents us with the culinary heritage of over 300 recipes from around 25 European countries and manages to acknowledge all fairly evenly ... even Bulgaria is well represented. Recipes usually open with a few comments and often with quotes from times past which cite the dish or main ingredient in some way.

Although a scholarly work, this also is eminently readable, as witnessed by the fact that this is my second time rereading purely for the pleasure of her prose. Organized by basic ingredients, which she points out is the way that peasant meals are themselves often organized, Luard's book is a treasure trove for anyone wants to get back to basics ... whether that is reconnecting with eating according to the seasons, vegetarian cooking (although there are good sections on meat and fish as well), simplicity in ingredients or the many other varied ways that cooks often view their craft these days.

I will be featuring some excerpts from this book occasionally.

A Small Town in Louisiana and Some Boudin

The Pig Stand was a white cinder block building with hand-written signs telling you what they offered and a couple of windows to order the food. The people on the sidewalk were mostly thin guys with crepey skin and women with pale skin and loose upper arms from eating too much deep-fried food. Everybody was drinking Dixie beer and eating off paper plates and laughing a lot. Guess if you had to stand around eating barbecued ribs in this kind of heat you had to have a sense of humor.

An enormously wide black woman with brilliant white teeth looked out of the order window at me and said, "Take ya awdah, please?"

I said, "Do you have boudin?" I had wanted to try boudin for years.

She grinned. "Honey, we gots the best boudin in Evangeline Parish."

"That's not what they say in Mamou."

She laughed. "Those fools in Mamou don' know nuthin' 'boud no boudin! Honey, you try some'a this, you won't be goin' back to no Mamou! This magic boudin! It be good for what ails you!"

"Okay. How about a couple of links of boudin, a beef rib with a little extra sauce, some dirty rice, and a Dixie."

She nodded, pleased. "That'll fix you up jes' fine."

"What makes you think I need fixing?"

She leaned toward me and touched a couple of fingers beneath her eye. "Dottie got the magic eye. Dottie know." Her eyes were smiling when she shouted the order into the kitchen, and I smiled with her. It wasn't just the food around here that gave comfort.

Passing cars would beep their horns and diners would wave at the cars and the people in the cars would wave back, sort of like everybody knew everybody else. ...

A couple of minutes later, Dottie called me back to the window and handed out my order on a coarse paper plate with enough napkins to insulate a house. I carried the food to the street, sat the Dixie on the curb, then went to work on the food. The boudin were plump and juicy, and when you bit into them they were filled with rice and pork and cayenne and onions and celery. Even in the heat, steam came from the sausage and it burned the inside of my mouth. The dirty rice was heavy and glutinous and rich with chicken livers. The rib was tender and the sauce chunky with onion and garlic. The tastes were strong and salty and wonderful, and pretty soon I was feeling eager to dive back into the case. Even if it meant being called Jeffrey.

The black woman looked out of her little window and asked, "Whatchu say 'bout dat boudin now?"

I said, "Tell me the truth, Dottie. This isn't really Ville Platte, is it? We're all dead and this is Heaven."

She grinned wider and nodded, satisfied. "Dottie say it'll fix you up. Dottie know." She touched her cheek beneath her left eye and then she laughed and turned away.

Voodoo River by Robert Crais

Thought for Food

Thanks to Tim. I love this quote!

Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good.

Alice May Brock, author

Resisting Valentine's Day

There are just some people who come over all hearts and flowers and pink-foil balloons and Hallmark-card sentiment around St. Valentine's Day and others, like me, who so do not. I snarl. I sneer. I scorn. So what am I doing here?

Well you might ask. The thing is, sooner or later, you're browbeaten. To keep moaning on and droning against it is to be a party-pooper, like someone who complains so much at a game of charades that she draws unwelcome attention to her one feeble effort. It's a bit like the Borg really: Resistance is futile.

Feast by Nigella Lawson

It's as if we're twins! (And I will just toss in Mother's Day and Father's Day into that selection that I sneer at and scorn.) Except that since resistance is futile I insist on going to dinner with Tom on Valentine's Day.