Texas Home Cooking Page 19
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 egg
Milk, as needed
Additional barbecue sauce, optional
Preheat the oven to 350° F.
Melt the butter in a heavy skillet. Add the onion, bell pepper, and garlic, and sauté until they are softened. Stir in the black pepper, cayenne, salt, and cumin, and sauté an additional 2 or 3 minutes. Spoon the vegetable mixture into a large bowl.
Add to the bowl the remaining ingredients, except the milk, and mix well with your hands. The meat should feel quite moist but not soupy. If it is too diy, add milk a tablespoon or two at a time until the consistency is right.
Mound the meat into a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan. Bake the meat, uncovered, for 40 minutes. Raise the oven temperature to 400° F, and continue baking another 20 to 30 minutes. If you wish, brush with an additional tablespoon or two of barbecue sauce in the last 10 minutes.
Serve the meat hot or cold. The meat loaf makes great leftovers and sandwiches.
Variation: Milagro Meat Loaf makes a great filling for stuffed peppers. Cut the tops off red or green bell peppers, and remove the seeds. Spoon the uncooked meat loaf mixture loosely into the peppers. Place the peppers in a baking dish with a few tablespoons of stock or water. Bake 40 minutes at 350° F, and about 10 minutes more at 400° F. Baste with barbecue sauce in the last few minutes, or top with a sprinkling of grated cheddar cheese.
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The B3R Brand is a sure sign of all-natural beef. Mary Lou Bradley's Wichita County ranch raises Angus cattle without hormones, growth stimulants, or antibiotics on one of the cattle industry's few family-owned and -operated facilities. To have some of the beef shipped to your door, see "Mail-Order Sources" ([>]).
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Old Dave's Original Burger
Frank X. Tolbert, the famous chili promoter, made a strong case for Athens, Texas, as the home of the hamburger. According to Tolbert's research, a lunch counter owner named fletcher Davis, better known as "Old Dave," invented the hamburger in the late 1880s as his menu specialty. His version was a greasy piece of ground beef placed between slices of hot home-baked bread, and served with a mixture of mustard and mayonnaise, a big slice of Bermuda onion, and pickles. Davis took the concoction to the St. Louis World's fair in 1904, where he sold it on the midway out of "Old Dave's Hamburger Stand," directly across from an Indian show featuring geronimo. McDonald's Restaurants' "Hamburger University" agrees that the sandwich first appeared at the fair, but attributes the invention to an unknown vendor.
6
to
8 ounces ground chuck, in a patty ½ inch thick
2 thick slices home-style sourdough bread
Prepared mustard and mayonnaise, mixed in equal portions
Onion and dill pickle slices, for garnish
Makes 1 burger
In a cast-iron or other heavy skillet, sear the meat on both sides over high heat. Reduce the heat to medium-low, and cook the meat until it is done to your taste.
While the meat cooks, warm the bread in the oven on low heat, making sure the bread doesn't toast. Remove it from the oven, and spread one piece with dollops of mustard and mayonnaise, a thick slice of onion, and a few pickles. Place the patty, undrained, on the other piece of bread, allowing the bread to absorb the grease before you form the sandwich.
Take a bite, savor, and sing the praises of Old Dave.
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Technique Tip
For the best ground beef, ask your butcher to twice grind a piece of chuck, top or bottom round, or rump, with enough fat to make up about 20 percent of the whole.
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O.T. Special Burger
Martin's Kum-Bak in Austin, an old-fashioned drive-in restaurant better known as Dirty's, is one of America's great hamburger joints, a place where the owners could make a good living just selling sniffs of the grill. This is our version of one of Dirty's specialties, named after the Old Timer who flips the meat behind the short-order counter, which is definitely the best place to sit.
10
to
12 ounces ground chuck, in 2 equal-size, ½-inch-thick patties
2 slices American cheese
1
or
2 slices cooked bacon, cut in half crosswise
1 hamburger bun
Mayonnaise
2 iceberg lettuce leaves
2 tomato slices
Makes 1 double burger
In a cast-iron or other heavy skillet, fry the patties over medium-high heat. About two minutes before they are cooked to your preference, top each patty with a slice of cheese and one or two bacon pieces.
While the meat cooks, warm the bun in an oven on low heat. Remove the bun, and smear both sides with mayonnaise. Add the lettuce and tomato to the bottom half, then top with both burgers, undrained, and perch the top half of the bun over the whole elaborate concoction. Eat immediately.
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Some people don't seem to understand what burgers are all about. At the "21" Club, New Yorkers pay $24 for a burger that doesn't have enough grease to oil a paper airplane.
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Old Texas lore claims children shouldn't eat mustard, because it would make their feet stink.
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Texas Grilled Cheese
This burger is based on Dirty's other big seller, the D. H. Special, even sexier than the novelist with the same initials.
6 ounces ground chuck, in a patty less than ½ inch thick
2 thin slices onion, pulled apart into individual rings
2 slices inexpensive white bread
Dill pickle slices
2 slices American cheese
2 tomato slices
Makes 1 burger
With your fingers or a spatula, press half the onion rings into each side of the meat.
In a cast-iron or other heavy skillet, fry the patty over medium-high heat to the desired doneness. While the meat cooks, toast the bread lightly, and top each hot slice with a sprinkling of pickles and a piece of cheese. Pop the burger and onions between the two slices. Lay the sandwich in the hot skillet or on a hot grill, and cook it, turning once, until the cheese melts into the meat. Serve the burger hot.
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The Texas A&M student body devours over 130 tons of hamburger annually.
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Tamale Pie
Tamale pie, a superb casserole, can be made with pork, but in Texas the meat is usually beef. The dish offers a lot of hearty tamale flavor without all the work of the dish that inspired it.
FILLING
1 pound lean ground beef
1 medium onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup corn kernels, fresh or frozen
1 cup chopped fresh tomatoes or 1 cup canned crushed tomatoes
½ cup unsalted beef stock
¼ cup raisins, optional
¼ cup sliced pimiento-stuffed green olives
1 tablespoon chili powder, preferably homemade ([>]) or Gebhardt's
2 teaspoons cumin seeds, toasted and ground
½ teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
½ teaspoon dried oregano, preferably Mexican
TOPPING
2 cups unsalted beef stock
1 cup masa harina
½ teaspoon chili powder, preferably homemade ([>]) or Gebhardt's
½ teaspoon salt
1 egg, separated
½ cup (2 ounces) grated mild or medium cheddar cheese
Crema, optional ([>])
Serves 6
Preheat the oven to 350° F. Grease a medium baking dish.
Make the filling: In a large skillet, sauté the ground beef, onion, bell pepper, and garlic until the meat is lightly browned. Pour off any accumulated fat. Mix in the corn, tomatoes, stock, raisins, and olives. Stir in the chili powder, the cumin, ½ teaspoon salt, and the oregano. Cook, uncovered, over medium-low heat for 20 minutes. At t
he end of the cooking, the mixture should no longer be soupy. Taste, and add more salt if you like. If it seems too moist, raise the heat and cook another minute or two.
While the filling cooks, prepare the dough topping: In a heavy saucepan, bring the stock to a boil, and gradually add in the masa harina, stirring constantly. Sprinkle in the chili powder and salt. Reduce the heat, and continue stirring until the masa is good and stiff, 8 to 10 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat. In a small bowl, beat the egg yolk, and stir it into the masa. In another small bowl, beat the egg white until stiff, and fold it into the masa.
Spoon the filling into the baking dish. Spread the batter over it. Top with the grated cheese. Bake the pie for 30 minutes, or until it is slightly puffed and lightly browned.
If you like, spoon a tablespoon or two of crema over each serving. The crema will melt into delicious rivulets around the hot pie. Cut the pie, and place slices on individual plates.
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Each June, Goliad, Texas, runs a hundred longhorn steers through its main streets for the "fastest parade in history." The Stampede started with the 1976 Bicentennial, and was so much fun the town made it an annual event.
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Chicken, Pork and Other Barnyard Fare
The meal was spread on a plain pine table without cover. We did not at first know that it was a pine table, owing to the fact that it did not seem to have been washed since the Texas revolution. Supper consisted of coffee without milk, flies without butter, cornbread, and "fry." "Fry" means rancid bacon charred by- the action of fire.
Alexander Sweet and John Knox,
On a Mexican Mustang through Texas
Most Texas visitors in the nineteenth century praised the German and Mexican food they encountered but constantly complained about the frontier fare of Southern settlers. Mostly from Tennessee and nearby areas, these Anglo pioneers lived contentedly on a subsistence level, getting by much of the time on the cornbread and fried pork they served Alex Sweet and John Knox. By and large, they agreed with the journalists' host, who told the travelers that this food was more "wholesome and better fur the stomach, than the high-toned slops you git in the cities."
Whatever the merits of their cooking, the early Southerners did raise their own staples, and over time they established a farming tradition that still thrives in many rural areas of the state. They grew corn from the beginning and kept semidomesticated hogs and a few chickens. Unlike the people who continued to push west into cattle country, their meat of choice remained pork throughout the nineteenth century and then became chicken for the first half of the twentieth century. Farmers could raise these animals in the barnyard, unlike beef cattle, and could even butcher them at home and preserve the pork. Beef may hold sway today—largely because of the spread of electrical refrigeration and freezing after World War II—but Texas has a long legacy of lighter and leaner farm-raised fare.
Hopkins County Chicken Stew
This stew has been a tradition in Hopkins County longer than anyone can recollect. The annual World Champion Hopkins County Stew Contest goes back thirty years, and the dish itself may date to the earliest decades of Anglo settlement in east Texas. Bill Elliot of the Sulphur Springs Chamber of Commerce speculates that the stew developed as a way of celebrating the end of the school year. Each student brought something for the school's kitchen pot, a huge iron kettle hung over an open wood fire. Although chicken is the meat of choice these days, Bill figures that squirrel and venison went into the pot originally, because folks at the time would have been reluctant to eat their egg-laying chickens. Hopkins County schools still serve the stew, now several times a month, and the cafeteria recipe even won the Stew Contest one year. That version inspired this one.
2 pounds chicken parts, preferably breasts or thighs
4 cups unsalted chicken stock
2½ teaspoons salt
4 medium baking potatoes, diced
1 large onion, diced
2 cups canned crushed tomatoes
1 15-ounce can tomato sauce
2 teaspoons chili powder, preferably homemade ([>]) or Gebhardt's
2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon coarse-ground black pepper
2 cups corn kernels, fresh or frozen
1 16-ounce can cream-style corn
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
Serves 6 to 8
Assuming you don't have a huge iron pot, use a Dutch oven or heavy stockpot for cooking the stew. Place the chicken in the pot with the stock and salt. Over medium heat, simmer the chicken until it is tender and cooked through, about 15 to 20 minutes. With a slotted spoon, remove the chicken, and set it aside until it is cool enough to handle.
Bring the stock back to a simmer, and add the potatoes and onion. Simmer until the potatoes are cooked through, about 15 minutes. In the meantime, skin, bone, and shred or dice the chicken. Return it to the pot, along with the tomatoes, tomato sauce, chili powder, paprika, and pepper. Bring the mixture to a simmer again. Add both types of corn and the butter. Cover the pot, and continue simmering the stew for at least 30 minutes, until it is quite thick. Stir the stew up from the bottom frequently to prevent scorching, and add a little water if it starts to get dry. Don't let it boil—that would toughen the chicken.
The stew is tasty with cornbread. In Hopkins County, though, it's usually served with fistfuls of crackers, slices of cheese, and plenty of pickles.
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Technique Tip
Some people insist the stew should cook a long time, as much as seven hours. We haven't found the extra cooking time worth the effort, but if you want to try it, be sure to stir the stew often.
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As with chili, everyone has a theory on what should and shouldn't go into Hopkins County Chicken Stew. A suggestion that tomato paste be substituted for whole tomatoes or sauce once incited a lively two-week debate in the Dallas Morning News. Discussions of fresh versus canned corn can get even more contentious.
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The World Champion Hopkins County Stew Contest, held each September in Sulphur Springs, is great fun. Inexpensive tickets allow you to wander around the city park sampling the seventy or eighty entries, most being cooked by contestants in period dress stirring iron cauldrons. Young women might want to enter the Cover Girl Contest, where dimples and curls count less than the ability to drive a tractor, milk a cow, and pluck a chicken.
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Old Texas lore claimed that eating chicken gizzards gave girls large breasts. Try them in the Classic Cream Gravy—the gizzards, that is.
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East Texas Fried Chicken
In our travels through Texas, we've found fried chicken seasoned with oranges, jalapeños, garlic, mustard, cayenne, and cumin. We've found it batter-dipped and cornmeal-coated, pan-fried and deep-fried, and cooked in lard, bacon drippings, shortening, and a multitude of oils, mainly corn, canola, safflower, and sesame. Forget the gimmicks. Nothing tops this recipe. We owe the secrets to a couple of serious pros, Lula Mae Austin, a Dallas cook, and the author James Villas, who devotes an entire chapter to frying chicken in his wonderful American Taste.
3
to
4 cups buttermilk
2 teaspoons Tabasco or other hot pepper sauce
2
to
3 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon fresh-ground black pepper
3½
to
4 pounds chicken parts
1½ cups all-purpose flour
1½ pounds (3 cups) shortening, preferably Crisco
3 tablespoons bacon drippings
Serves 6
At least 2½ hours (and up to 12 hours) before you plan to eat, mix the buttermilk, Tabasco or other sauce, ½ teaspoon of the salt, and ¼ teaspoon of the pepper in a shallow dish. Add the chicken parts, turning to coat them well with the mixture. Cover the dish, and refrigerate it.
About 20 minute
s before you plan to fry the chicken, bring it to room temperature. Sprinkle the remaining salt and pepper into a medium-size paper bag, and add the flour. Set the bag aside.
In a 10- to 12-inch cast-iron skillet, melt the shortening over high heat. Add the bacon drippings to the skillet. When small bubbles form on the surface, reduce the heat slightly. Place a large brown paper sack near the stove for draining the chicken.
Starting with the dark pieces, take a piece of chicken out of the marinade, shake off the excess liquid, and drop it into the bag of seasoned flour. Shake the bag well so that the piece is coated thoroughly. Remove it from the bag, and lower it gently into the skillet, skin-side down. Repeat until all the chicken is in the skillet, arranging it so that all the pieces cook evenly. The pieces should fit snugly together, although they shouldn't stick to each other. Reduce the heat to medium, and cover the skillet. Fry the chicken exactly 17 minutes.