Grilling: A Texas tradition

Like any distinctive cuisine, to cook with a Texas flair, you have to have the proper ingredients and gear to make flavors come to life. In this case, you want  your food to speak with a Texas–or even TxMex–accent.

Below find an incomplete list of staples to consider having on hand to help  you put a Texas twist on most anything you prepare. These are in no particular order:

* Do Not Refrigerate

Some gear and utensil that may be helpful to you include:

Mexican Chocolate Chewies

MEXICAN CHOCOLATE CHEWIES by Lisa Fain

Chocolate chewies are light, crisp, and, yes, chewy chocolate cookies that are studded with chocolate chips and pecans. You see them at bakeries all over Texas, and yet not too many people make them at home. There’s really no reason for this, especially as they’re a snap to make. I’ve added a bit of cinnamon and chipotle chile powder to give them a bit of spice and heat.

ABOUT 36 COOKIES

Ingredients

2 cups pecans, roughly chopped
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/2cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon chipotle chile powder
1/4  teaspoon kosher salt
3 large egg whites
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. While oven is heating, arrange the chopped pecans in a skillet and place in the oven for 5 minutes or until they’ve turned a bit darker brown (but not black) and smell fragrant. Mix roasted pecans with the powdered sugar, cocoa powder, cinnamon, chipotle chile powder, and salt.

3. Stir the egg whites into the dry mixture by hand (or beat with a stand mixer on low) just until the batter is well mixed. Stir in the vanilla extract and chocolate chips. Drop tablespoon-size portions of batter on the sheet an inch apart, about six per sheet, as these cookies will spread while baking. Bake for 15 minutes or until crackling on the surface.

4. Remove sheet from oven, lift the parchment paper with the cookies still on it off the sheet, and cool on a rack. Allow cookies to cool for 20 minutes before removing from paper, as they’re very delicate. They will keep for a few days in an airtight container.

From THE HOMESICK TEXAN COOKBOOK by Lisa Fain. Copyright © 2011 Lisa Fain. Published by Hyperion. Available wherever books are sold. All Rights Reserved.

Lisa Fain, photo by Jan Cobb

You don’t have to be a seventh-generation Texan to feel a deep connection to the Lone Star State and a sense of longing when you are away from it.

That Lisa Fain does have those very deep roots made her longing more pronounced.

Listen to Lisa Fain talk about Texas food and cooking.

In 1995, when she was 25-years-old, Lisa took a job in Manhattan and thus achieved a lifelong dream of living and working in New York City. It was a thrill for this young Texan, and she took it all in: the skyscrapers, city lights, and the people.

Once the newness and excitement of the city began to wear off, she started to miss home–especially the aromas and the flavors of good Texas cooking: her father’s chicken fried steak; the spicy pork tacos she could find at nearly any gas station in Dallas; the custard-like chess pie, her grandmother’s favorite dessert.

When she went in search of familiar food in the City that Never Sleeps, she could not find it. So, she started cooking up her favorite foods in her small urban kitchen. Eventually she started the blog Homesick Texan to document her recipes, photography and stories.

Homesick Texan has been named one of the top 50 food blogs in the world by the Times of London and Best Regional Cuisine Food Blog by Saveur. It has also received recognition from The New York Times, Bon Appetit and Gourmet.

Lisa Fain’s culinary curiosity and enthusiasm are a combination of nature and nurture. She said nearly everyone in her family cooks, and growing up they would all gather around the dinner table at mealtime to break bread and talk about their day.

Cooking is a family value on both sides of her family, which Lisa said she considers “really neat.” She even thought about attending culinary school at one point.

Instead she moved to New York to pursue a career in advertising and marketing.

Lisa is an active member of Foodways Texas and The Southern Foodways Alliance, and is also a certified barbecue judge.

The Homesick Texan Cookbook by Lisa Fain

ENTER FOR YOUR CHANCE TO WIN ONE OF TWO COPIES OF THE HOMESICK TEXAN COOKBOOK.

Whether you were born in Texas or got here as fast as you could, it’s a place that gets under your skin and into your blood and bones and muscle; no matter where you go in the world Texas goes with you.

Being away from this place can set up powerful cravings for the land, cities, people, and—of course—the food.

Lisa Fain, a seventh generation Texan, understands the strength of these cravings. When she moved to New York in 1995, a place she’d dreamed of living while growing up in Houston, she found everything she desired…except Texas food.

She says she always loved the food of her ancestors, especially at the hands of her mother and grandmother. “I took it for granted,” she said. Adding she never expected that when she left the Lone Star State for New York, she wouldn’t be able to find the food she loved–not even what most Texas cooks consider basic ingredients.

Such as Ro*tel.

For the uninitiated, Ro*tel is a canned tomato product consisting of ripe diced tomatoes with green chile peppers and spices. It is mild to hot, regular to chunky, and now they even offer tomato sauces.

It is a key ingredient (along with Velveeta Cheese) in a simple, traditional Queso dip. And that’s what Lisa Fain wanted to make when Texas friends came to visit her in Manhattan. However, after a fruitless search of the five boroughs of New York, she followed a tip and headed by train to New Jersey. She heard of a huge international market there that “had to have Ro*tel.”

After arriving at the market, walking the last mile there in the rain, Lisa discovered the store did not have her beloved Ro*tel. “In hindsight, I probably should have called ahead,” she laughed.

Incidents like the Ro*tel fiasco prompted Lisa Fain to start a blog in 2005 called Homesick Texan, where she celebrates Texas home cooking through stories, recipes, photographs and community. It didn’t take long for the blog to become a hit with Texans–homesick or otherwise–and other folks without a connection to Texas.

People from around the globe check into the site for Lisa’s delicious recipes and great storytelling.  And September 2011, Hyperion Books published The Homesick Texan cookbook, filled with some favorite recipes from the blog, as well as many new recipes and stories that are sure to delight.

HOW TO ENTER TO WIN A COPY OF THE HOMESICK TEXAN COOKBOOK BY LISA FAIN

What would you feel homesick for were you to leave Texas? Tell us about it in the comments section of this story and you will be entered to win one of two copies of The Homesick Texan Cookbook by Lisa Fain (Retails at $29.99). Winners will be drawn at random using random.org.

RULES of Eligibility:

1. Must be 18 years old to enter.
2. Open only to people living in the Austin, Texas Metro Area.
3. Winners must pick up book from the KUT 90.5 FM studios on the UT Austin campus.
4. Entries must be received by 6 p.m. CST Monday May 7, 2012 to be eligible for the drawing.
5. Must leave a comment on this page telling us what you would be homesick for if you were to leave Texas. Comments that do not meet that criteria will not be entered into the drawing.
6. Only one entry per person | household | IP address.
7. Must include your name and valid email address to be eligible for drawing.
8. Only entries from people who haven’t won anything from Field & Feast in the last three months are eligible to win.
9. Two winners will be selected at random after 6 p.m. CST Monday May 7, 2012, and contacted via email by the show’s producer to arrange pick up of their book.

NOTE: These comments are monitored, so don’t fret if you do not see your comment for several hours. It will be time stamped and counted if it meets the deadline and eligibility requirements.

The Best Spinach Salad, photo via Tecolote website courtesy of Kristin Schell

Katie Kraemer Pitre of Tecolote Farm in Manor, Texas says she loves this recipe from one of the farm’s CSA basketeers — Kristin Schell — which uses spinach from the farm.

Ingredients

4-6 cups fresh spinach
1⁄4 cup toasted pine nuts
2 tbs fresh lemon juice (appx one lemon)
4 – 5 tbs extra virgin olive oil *
1⁄2 cup grated parmesan cheese
salt & pepper to taste

Directions

Squeeze the lemon into the bottom of a large serving bowl. Add olive oil and wisk until emulsified. Taste and add more lemon or olive oil to taste. Add salt and pepper.

Gently tear spinach and add to the bowl. Top with toasted pine nuts and grated parmesan cheese. Toss and serve.

*The general rule of thumb for making a vinaigrette is a ratio of 3:1. 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar, in this case lemon juice. I like this dressing lemony, so I use a more equal ratio.

Tecolote Farm Vegetables, Photo © Cecilia Nasti

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a popular way for consumers to buy local, seasonal food directly from a farmer — and you’re finally ready to join one.

I asked Katie Kraemer Pitre of Tecolote Farm in Manor, Texas what questions someone ought to ask when choosing a farm and farmer from which to purchase a CSA subscription. She provided the following:

• How long is the commitment
• How many does a share feed, and
• How am I helping your farm?

When you join a CSA you are going into business with the farmer — usually on a season-by-season basis. The length of the season varies depending on where you live. The spring and summer season at Tecolote Farm, for example, is 18 weeks.

Your fee, often paid in full and in advance, underwrites the cost farmers incur when growing your food. Your share–many feed between two and four people for a week– is then delivered to your home or to a drop off site in your community on a specific day.

The fee you pay in advance allows the farmer to buy seeds and amendments for the season’s crops (as well as other farm expenses), but does not necessarily guarantee you will get a return on your investment. It is vital to keep in mind that when you subscribe to a CSA your are helping the farmer shoulder the risks and the rewards.

Because agriculture is affected by weather, pests, pestilence, and plain old fate, some shares may be sparse while others are abundant. The one thing you can depend on is your farmer’s commitment and dedication to growing you the best food they possibly can.  You’ll always get something in your share, you just never know what or how much.

If you cannot live with that kind of uncertainty, this may not be a program for you.  However, if you’re willing to take a chance on a farmer, you’ll end up with some of the freshest, best tasting food you’ve ever had, and know exactly where it came from, how it was grown, and who made it possible.

Isn’t that worth a little risk?

David, Katie and their children when they were all a little younger

Having grown up on a citrus farm in California, Katie Kraemer Pitre thought farming was a perfectly reasonable way to make a living.

David Pitre, meanwhile, grew up in Texas and studied philosophy in college. It was a deep and abiding respect for the land and “coming from a family that had a near obsessive love of good, clean food” that lead him to become a tiller of the soil.

The couple met in California when David was working on a farm there.

Before farming near Austin, the couple farmed in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley of Alaska with its long summer days and deep glacial soil, and in central coastal California.

Katie said she followed David back to Texas where they looked for land they could farm. They chose the Austin area because of a population that was already showing signs of a love of fresh, organic and local food.

They purchased 12 acres  of Blackland Prairie about 14 miles east of Austin, and named their farm Tecolote, which is the Spanish word for “owl.”

When they moved onto the property owls were in abundance as they are to this day.

Katie and David  raised their three children on the farm: nineteen-year-old Zachary (who was just one year old when the farm took root), fifteen-year-old Julia Claire, and Henry, who is nearly thirteen-years-old.

Blackland Prairie soil is heavy black clay that’s perfect for cotton — a crop cultivated in that area and picked by hand through the 1960s–but more challenging for vegetables. Katie said she was just naive enough to think farming in Texas would be the same as farming in California.

Live and learn.

They were certified organic in 1994 and shortly thereafter started their Community Supported Agriculture program (CSA), whereby eaters helped to pay for the cost of farming via subscription. In exchange for the fee consumers paid, they received baskets of fresh, organic produce on a weekly basis.

Tecolote Farm has the longest continuously running CSA program in Texas.

And for the first ten years of operation, word of mouth advertising provided them with as many subscribers as they could feed. In fact, they had up to a 10 year waiting list for their CSA. At the time they started selling direct to the public via subscription, there were very few urban farms or CSA programs. Today, there are more farms and more places for consumers to find local organic produce, so there’s room on the subscription list again.

David and Katie are gearing up to feed even more people than before, thanks to purchasing more acreage about 12 miles from the farm, along the fertile banks of the Colorado River.  In addition, they’ve started to accept SNAP cards (Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program–formerly called food stamps). And David says they’re also developing a program whereby they’ll get good food into the hands of more people who have a hard time affording it. David said it will be a collaboration between his current subscribers and the farm–making the vegetables available at cost–to the new low-income members.

When asked why he would intentionally break even (if that), David said, “I’m a farmer. I feed people.”

Back when I lived on a road called Hog Eye, eight miles east of Austin, Texas  in a town called Manor (pronounced MAY-nur), I counted among my neighbors, David Pitre and Katie Kraemer Pitre of Tecolote Farm.

Tecolote is a Spanish word for owl; when David and Katie bought the land that would become their farm, owls were (and remain) abundant.

Tecolote Farm’s 12 acres received organic certification in 1994, and the farm supplies the longest continually running Community Supported Agriculture program—or CSA—in the state of Texas. CSAs are a popular way for consumers to buy local, seasonal food directly from a farmer.

Katie says when they got started, they put flyers advertising their CSA on the windshields of cars parked in the Wheatsville Food Co-op parking lot in Austin. They cultivated their first sixteen members with this old school approach (old school was the only school in the early 90s) and that was the last marketing they had to do for the next ten years. Word of mouth kept them in members, and the members were kept in healthy, delicious organically raised produce.

That doesn’t mean they’ve had an easy row to hoe.

Farming is a 24/7 year-round business for this couple. They raised three children while raising a variety of crops, including rare and heirloom vegetables. They’ve had to deal with with the same kinds of issues those of us who grow organic vegetables gardens deal with, but on a much larger scale.

And then there’s the water.

When they purchased their land, the well on the property had never gone dry–even during the worst drought conditions Central Texas had seen to date, which was in the 1950s. But that changed  several years ago when Austin’s growth started pushing east, and demand for water grew. Travis county dug wells to meet the needs, which in the end, dried up Tecolote’s water supply.

But all is not lost. Food writer for the Austin American Statesman, Addie Broyles wrote an article for the paper recently that details the Petri’s water woes, and the solution.

David and Katie plan to grow a variety of healthful organically grown food for the foreseeable future, because at their core they are farmers, and that’s what farmers do.

In the Austin, Texas area find Tecolote Farm  produce at: Downtown Farmers Market | Cedar Park Farms to Market | Sunset Valley Farmers Market | as a CSA subscriber.

Bee on a blueberry blossom, Photo by Bob MacInnes

Veteran gardener, and former Field & Feast guest,  Judy Barrett, has a new book published through Texas A & M Press.

Called Recipes From and For the Garden, the charming book offers readers more than a hundred simple recipes for using, enjoying, and enhancing the bounty of their gardens.

The recipes are easy; some are old family favorites. Judy even borrows from others cooks and gardeners she admires, and encourages home gardening (and creating from the garden) for everyone.

You can also visit her blog and website called Judy Barrett’s Homegrown.

The following recipe comes from her book, and is for Blueberry Crunch.

Blueberries require pollination to set fruit, and the best insects for that are native bumblebees and solitary bees. If you add a bee nesting block to your garden, you will ensure that your blueberry bushes will provide you with an abundance of delicious fruit.

Serves 6 – 8

Ingredients

• 4 cups fresh blueberries
• 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 3/4 cups all purpose flour
• 3/4 cups uncooked oats
• 1/2 cup (on stick) butter or margarine, melted

Directions

1. Place the blueberries in a 2-quart baking dish; spread them evenly.
2. Combine remaining ingredients and sprinkle over the berries.
3. Bake for 45 minutes in a preheated 350°F oven.
4. Serve warm or cool, with cream, or ice cream, or plain.

Bumblebee, photo from Texas Bumblebees Facebook Page

We love honeybees; one reason we love them is in their name: honey.

We’re willing to overlook the fact  that this sweet, viscous amber liquid is regurgitated flower nectar. That’s because honey is more delicious than the reality of how it’s made is disgusting.

But did you know, dear Locavores, that this disgusting food of the Gods comes from an imported species? Yeah, that’s right: honeybees aren’t from around here. They’re originally from Europe and Norther Africa, brought to this country with the first colonists in the 1600s.

So, what about native bees such as bumblebees or solitary bees? These insects are homegrown, and yet, we barely notice these hard workers that are a vital part of the native ecosystem.Where’s the “local love”?

Just because they don’t live in impressively large colonies with ten to twenty thousand members, or make honey for us to steal (let’s be real, they do not make it for us), does that mean they should be ignored?

Of course not. In fact, bumblebees and solitary bees evolved with the various native ecosystems, making them much more efficient pollinators than the European honeybee. And–if I may say–they are also more effective pollinators on crops such as tomatoes, melons, and blueberries–to name a few.

So how can we help these tiny critters? One thing we can do is get to know them. A good place to do that is at the website Bumblebees of Texas, curated by invertebrate biologist, Michael Warriner.

Another thing we can do is to create bee gardens where they can come and feast. The group Texas Bee Watchers promotes just that and offers images of bee gardens and lists of bee friendly plants to get you started.

Native bees are incredible pollinators. Two hundred solitary bees, such as Mason Bees or Leaf Cutter Bees, can do a better job pollinating an acre of orchard, for example, than a hive of ten thousand honeybees. You can encourage them to stay near your food garden and orchard (if you have one), by installing nesting boxes for them.

Bee House by Rock Rose

Jenny, from Austin, Texas, who curates the blog Rock Rose, generously shared a photo of a charming and rustic bee nesting house that she made for her garden.

Markley and Louisa Ehrlich and their Bee Block, photo by Michael Warriner

Michael Warriner shared a photo of Austin High School students (and twin sisters) Markely and Louisa Ehrlich, who built and sold bee nesting boxes–called Plan Bee–for a school project. They donated the money they raised to a pollinator conservation project at the Houston, Texas zoo.

The key to making the nesting blocks is to use untreated wood for the project.

You can find plans for making bee blocks of your own, as well as nesting boxes for bumblebees by following this link.