TEX MEX GRILL
Review by Barb & Ron Kroll
The Tex-Mex Grill and Backyard Barbacoa Cookbook
(Broadway Books) ISBN 978-0767930734 0767930738
This cookbook features American regional cuisine from the Texas and northern Mexico borderlands. Robb Walsh provides more than 85 recipes for grilling meat, grilled seafood, grill seasonings, BBQ rubs and hot salsa.
Whether you cook on charcoal BBQs, gas & electric grills or smoker grills, this Tex-Mex cookbook will teach you about grilling tools and techniques to create a perfect backyard barbeque.
How to make fajitas
Robb Walsh's book highlights the recipes of cooks at tailgate grills, BBQ cook offs, taco trucks, Tex Mex restaurants and bars. He introduces each comprehensive, well-researched chapter and delicious recipe.
If you are looking for a good recipe for beef fajitas, for example, look in chapter six. The BBQ cookbook provides recipes for flatiron fajitas and classic fajitas, as well as Tex Mex fajita marinade.
You will learn about the history of fajitas. (The word means "little belt" cut from outside skirt steak.) You will also see stories and photos about Ninfa's on Navigation, the Houston, Texas restaurant that made fajitas famous.
One sidebar uses diagrams to show you how to cut flatiron steaks from a top blade roast. Another sidebar lists fajita fixin's, with recipes, e.g., black bean hummus. A chart shows cuts of Angus beef. Another sidebar describes La Margarita, a 24-hour Tex Mex restaurant in San Antonio, Texas, that is famous for its sizzling fajitas.
Each chapter of the 244-page cookbook provides information on barbeque history, including the meaning of barbeque (derived from the Spanish word, barbacoa).
Black-and-white photos, many historic, depict Tex Mex restaurants, taco trucks, cooking on charcoal grills and a tailgate grill, steak cuts, BBQ cook offs and recipes from The Tex Mex Grill.
BBQ grills
The first chapter of the barbeque cookbook discusses mesquite grilling. Robb Walsh advises BBQ chefs to burn the mesquite wood down and grill over the hot coals to tone down the wood smoke flavor.
The BBQ equipment section describes the pros and cons of covered charcoal grills, barrel grills, offset smokers, barbecue pits, flat tops and comals (griddles).
You will also learn about grilling tools, including basting mops, drip pans and charcoal starter chimneys.
Barbeque seasonings
The grill seasonings section provides websites for buying seasoning blends online at Texas Spice Company, Texjoy and other mail order spice companies. It also includes no-MSG, low-salt recipes for grill seasonings like chile butter and coffee chipotle BBQ sauce.
Sample Tex-Mex BBQ recipes
Ancho root beer BBQ sauce. Watermelon margaritas. Grilled rib eye with chile butter. Rack of lamb with pepper jelly glaze. Grapefruit chicken fajitas. Grilled quail with cilantro cream. Grilled stuffed peppers. Grilled shrimp and guacamole salad. Filet mignon tacos. Tex Mex quesadillas. Tangerine chicken. Grilled tomato guacamole. Tex Mex ranch dressing. Chipotle curry sour cream. Chile grilled pineapple. Char grilled squash. Texas red grapefruit salsa. Ancho raisin salsa. Pickled jalapenos.
Contents
- Introduction
- Mesquite Wood and Chile Pequins
- Frozen Margaritas and the Cadillac Bar
- Disappearing Skirts and the New Fajitas
- Meat and Beer in Monterrey
- Backyard Barbacoa and Smoke-Braising
- Texas Tailgating and Wild Game
- Big Fish and Brown Shrimp
- Taco Truck Taquitos and Tortaburgers
- Bicultural Beans and Border Sides
- Hot Salsas and Pickled Peppers
- Chile Glossary and Mail Order Sources
- Index
Author
Robb Walsh has published several cookbooks, including The Tex Mex Cookbook, Legends of Texas Barbeque Cookbook, Nuevo Tex Mex and The Texas Cowboy Cookbook.