On The Range is a weekly exploration of the history and lore of Texas menu items.Sometime toward 3 a.m., when the drinking is (usually) winding down and serious munchies coming on, almost anything will make for a snack, providing it releases the right amount of filler and fat into your…

On The Range is a weekly exploration of the history and lore of Texas menu items. “Was there ever a fruit as sensual as the avocado? So rough-hewn, dare-to-touch-me masculine on the outside, so yielding, inviting, soft spring green and feminine inside?…It’s no wonder that this perfect fruit begs to…

On The Range is a weekly exploration of the history and lore of Texas menu items. “When you have four hundred pounds of beans in the house, you need have no fear of starvation. Other things, delicacies such as sugar, tomatoes, peppers, coffee, fish or meat, may come sometimes miraculously,…

On The Range is a weekly exploration of the history and lore of Texas menu items.San Francisco in the mid-1960’s. Peace, love, and cable cars. Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. If you were into music, you could go to the Avalon Ballroom or Bill Graham’s Fillmore…

Goats helped settle America. Not kidding: According to Robb Walsh, author of The Tex-Mex Cookbook, goats were the preferred diet of common folk in Europe, so when Columbus sailed to the New World on his second voyage in 1493 he brought goats for meat, cheese, and milk–along with Spanish shepherds…

Little bits of meat–that’s the literal definition of carnitas, those bite-size morsels of pork that have served as a favorite snack food throughout central Mexico for many years. However, according to eminent British food historian Rachel Laudan, carnitas are actually the preferred food of rural weddings in places such as…

Poblano peppers or Anaheim? When making chiles rellenos, the chef must first consider which pepper might better serve his or her vision of the completed dish. Indeed, they are similar and both are widely used, but tasting reveals subtle but noticeable differences. The leaner Anaheim pepper is actually American in…

What’s in a name? Unless I miss my guess, the guy who first coined the expression must have been thinking about guisado, a Mexican branch of the stew family. Why is this the case? You can answer the question by trying a simple experiment. Think about beef stew. What images…

Mexican cooks reuse leftovers like nobody’s business. Consider the plight of the frugal family in days of yore, north or south of the border. The basics of life–shelter and food–are not certainties. Since the beginning of farming, rural families learned not to toss any part of a plant or animal…

Toasted monkey or [expletive deleted]? These are the two prevailing definitions for the origin of the term chimichanga, that ever-popular fried burrito that has become a staple at Tex-Mex establishments.Chimichangas may have originated as early as the 1940’s, when cooks at a bar in Nogales, Arizona baked (not fried) one…

Try to define the taco. It’s like inviting trouble to sit down and hang out awhile.According to Alison Cook, who wrote a landmark story in Texas Monthly some twenty years ago, “Taco Capitol USA,” the only constant is the tortilla–and some people even argue about that. Our first encounter is…

Chili con carne, better known as chili for short, was named Official State Dish of Texas back in the late 1970s. Why chili and not barbecue or steak? According to Paul Burka, political writer, food guru, and all-around resident curmudgeon of Texas Monthly magazine, the esteemed members of the Texas…

The classification of tequila is determined by the distillation process, presence or absence of adulterants and length of time spent in aging. If the tequila is distilled from 100% blue agave–a succulent plant related to the lily family and not the cactus–it will be labeled as such on the bottle…

Corn or flour?Depends on the filling. This comes from Alison Cook, author of “Taco Capitol, USA,” a groundbreaking Texas Monthly cover story on the subject of Tex-Mex cuisine, who notes that while flour tortillas are better suited to Northern Mexico-style grilled meats and to breakfast tacos, “certain (soft) taco fillings…

Let’s face it: A true Tex-Mex establishment succeeds or fails on the strength of its enchiladas. I realize I’m speaking only for myself, at least as far as popular dishes go. Many patrons of an El-or-La-something-or-other (as Rosemary Kent dubbed Tex-Mex restaurants in her Genuine Texas Handbook, released a generation…

Most of us–well, most non-Hispanics, anyway–have been eating nachos for many years without a clue as to where the term originated. You see, in Tejano culture, “Nacho” is merely the nickname for Ignacio, a rather common name in Spanish-speaking households. And according to Robb Walsh and his Tex-Mex Cookbook, this…

Pig’s head tamales?Well, yes. Robb Walsh notes in his Tex-Mex cookbook that traditional emporiums use pig’s heads as their base meat when making their husky creations. The head is boiled until the meat and lard cook away, then the broth is used to moisten the masa harina (corn meal infused…

Beans for breakfast? Are you kidding?Ah, but according to the indispensable tome The Tex-Mex Cookbook, here in the Lone Star State a pot of beans was often used to break a cowboy’s fast on the long trail, whether plain (as preferred by eminent Texas writer J Frank Dobie) or with…

Let’s get one thing straight: Tex-Mex has never pretended to represent Mexican cuisine in its entirety. In fact, according to Robb Walsh, author of The Tex-Mex Cookbook, the genre was developed by Euro-American descendants and Hispanics living in Texas (Tejanos)–and was designed to be marketed to gringos. This week, my…

I made a rather startling discovery while continuing my quest into the origins of Tex-Mex. For some reason I had assumed fajitas were a California addition, perhaps because of their ready adoption in to the presumably healthier Cal-Mex lineup. But no–legend credits Ninfa’s in Houston, although according to Robb Walsh’s…

The first of a series documenting Chris Meesey’s personal quest for authentic Tex-Mex. But we’ll let him tell you more… I’m a genu-wine Texan, born and bred. In fact, I began life at Nix Hospital, San Antonio–less than one mile from The Alamo, the acknowledged epicenter of the Texas Universe…