Truly Texas Mexican: A Native Culinary Heritage in Recipes
Grover E. Murray Studies in the American Southwest
by Adán Medrano
Published by: Texas Tech University Press
“The 8 Best Mexican Cookbooks To Read in 2022” by The Spruce Eats
Description
Over thousands of years, Native Americans in what is now Texas passed down their ways of roasting, boiling, steaming, salting, drying, grinding, and blending. From one generation to another, these ancestors of Texas’s Mexican American community lent their culinary skills to combining native and foreign ingredients into the flavor profile of indigenous Texas Mexican cooking today. Building on what he learned from his own family, Adán Medrano captures this distinctive flavor profile in 100 kitchen-tested recipes, each with step-by-step instructions. Equally as careful with history, he details how hundreds of indigenous tribes in Texas gathered and hunted food, planted gardens, and cooked. Offering new culinary perspective on well-known dishes such as enchiladas and tamales, Medrano explains the complexities of aromatic chiles and how to develop flavor through technique as much as ingredients. Sharing freely the secrets of lesser-known culinary delights, such as turcos, a sweet pork pastry served as dessert, and posole, giant white corn treated with calcium hydroxide, he illuminates the mouth-watering interconnectedness of culture and cuisine. The recipes and personal anecdotes shared in Truly Texas Mexican illuminate the role that cuisine plays in identity and community.
“Don’t Count the Tortillas: The Art of Texas Mexican Cooking”
Grover E. Murray Studies in the American Southwest
by Adán Medrano
Published by: Texas Tech University Press
Description
From an early age, Chef Adán Medrano understood the power of cooking to enthrall, to grant artistic agency, and to solidify identity as well as succor and hospitality. In this second cookbook, he documents and explains native ingredients, traditional techniques, and innovations in casero (home-style) Mexican American cooking in Texas. “Don’t Count the Tortillas” offers over 100 kitchen-tested recipes, including newly created dishes that illustrate what is trending in homes and restaurants across Texas. Each recipe is followed by clear, step-by-step instructions, explanation of cooking techniques, and description of the dishes’ cultural context. Dozens of color photographs round out Chef Medrano’s encompassing of a rich indigenous history that turns on family and, more widely, on community—one bound by shared memories of the art that this book honors.
About the Author
Adán Medrano is a food writer, chef and filmmaker specializing in the indigenous foods of Texas and the Americas. His book, Truly Texas Mexican: A Native Culinary Heritage In Recipes, published by Texas Tech University Press, received the “Finalist, Book Of The Year” award from Foreword Reviews.
In his most recent history and cookbook, “Don’t Count The Tortillas–The Art Of Texas Mexican Cooking,” Medrano’s 100 recipes focus on the aesthetic aspects of cooking that universally impact identity and community. It was acclaimed as among the “18 Best Native American Cookbooks of all time” by Book Authority.
Medrano is Executive Producer/Writer of the 2021 food documentary, Truly Texas Mexican, which won “Best Documentary” at the New York Independent Cinema Awards and “Audience Choice Award” at the Hill Country Film Festival. It was an “Official Selection” at the Sonoma International Film Festival and it is streaming internationally in English and Spanish.
He spent 23 years working throughout Latin America, Europe and Asia, and during his travels came to recognize the cultural importance of food. His professional work in restaurant kitchens includes fine dining at “Restaurant Ten Bogaerde” in Belgium and volunteering as the Chef of Houston’s Casa Juan Diego shelter for homeless families. The US Ambassador to Russia invited him to Moscow as the featured chef at the official July 4th event in the gardens of the Ambassador’s residence.
He has lectured about food & culture at academic institutions, including the Harvard University Co-op, and the University of Leeds. He has showcased his recipes at the Museum Of Fine Arts, Houston; at the Culinary Institute of America, as well as at the American Book Center in Amsterdam, and the Yorkshire Dales Food and Drink Festival in Great Britain.