Chances are that when you’re craving Mexican food, you think about rich, gooey queso with perfectly fried tortilla chips or a sizzling fajita platter. But it’s time to take your Mexican cravings up a notch and look further than the Tex-Mex that Texas so fervently embraces. Traditional Texas Mexican food is its own culinary art form, and chef Adán Medrano (photo above) has compiled 100 of these traditional recipes in his book Truly Texas Mexican (Texas Tech University Press, $29.95).
Medrano is a chef and food writer based in Houston and when he’s not whipping up a new recipe, he works for a media, food production and research group called JM Communications. What he calls a “native culinary heritage in recipes,” Truly Texas Mexican highlights the history of Mexican food in the Texas region and the traditions in which it is grounded. The book includes well-known dishes like fajitas and more traditional options like a wedding salad. But how are Tex-Mex and Texas Mexican food different? We sat down with chef Medrano to sort out the differences between these two seemingly similar cuisines.
The big question: What is the difference between Texas Mexican and Tex-Mex cuisine?
The differences can be set up in two categories: in their history and in their flavor profile. Truly Texas Mexican food is the culinary history of indigenous people who first arrived in Texas 10,000 years ago. It is the first food of Texas. Our food cannot be considered south of the border because it existed north of the Rio Grande long before it was a border. Tex-Mex begins in 1900 when a visitor from Chicago, who married a San Antonio lady, began his own restaurant called The Original Mexican Restaurant. It was by Anglos, for Anglos. They liked the food from the cafes and restaurants in San Antonio but they didn’t want to travel there because they felt it was unsafe or not clean. So they set up this restaurant and became very famous. That’s how Tex-Mex began. The flavor profile of Tex-Mex restaurants is within a limited area. They don’t use a variety of chiles and they use them mainly for spice and heat. Texas Mexican food uses a wide variety of chiles and they are selected for flavor, aroma and color — the heat is secondary. Tex-Mex’s flavor profile also has a love of frying. Everything is fried. Texas Mexican food uses frying in a very limited way because it is not an indigenous technique. We also do not use a lot of fat, while Tex-Mex does. They are two very different foods.
Tell us about what you ate growing up.
My personal stories about my family are what compose the third story line of my book. My personal stories about my family are about the food that I enjoyed, one of them being the freshly made corn tortilla. You make it by hand and roast it on the comal. So you have the exterior being very crisp, roasted and aromatic and the interior, which is moist. The two contrasting textures in your mouth and the aroma are just wonderful. My mother used to make those for me and when I was about four or five she would make a dish called machito. You take the tortilla and you sprinkle water on it after it’s cooked and you fold it up like a little cigar. It is amazingly delicious.
Are there any Mexican restaurants in Houston that you believe to be Truly Texas Mexican?
Sylvia’s Enchilada Kitchen. All of her recipes are traced back to her mother, and she makes sure all of her ingredients are like the ones she grew up with. She uses nothing but the best queso fresco from La Vaquita, she will not buy any other brand. Her carne guisada tastes just like my mother’s.
If you could only eat one dish from your cookbook, which would it be?
Carne guisada with a roasted corn tortilla and roasted Anaheim chiles with salt (photo below).
What is your next favorite food after Texas Mexican?
I also really like Thai and Indian.
Do you ever eat at fast-food Mexican places like Taco Bell or Taco Cabana?
I think that the distinction is whether I eat at fast food chain restaurants or fast food taco places. The tacos that are sold on the street are very fast. They can be delivered to you faster than Taco Bell, but they’re delicious. I eat at what I like to call fast-food family places, because some of the best tacos can be done really fast.
What has been your favorite part of publishing Truly Texas Mexican?
The visceral response — the physical, bodily response — of readers whose food this is. I gave a talk at the AARP in San Antonio, they asked me to give a lecture on what our food is and then give a demo. It was a packed auditorium, and the majority of them were Mexican-Americans from San Antonio. Some of the ladies started crying. They had never heard their food lauded in that way, and one woman came up to me and had tears in her eyes and said, “When you were up there, I saw my father.” This is the first book that elucidates and affirms us as a people.
Portrait by Lynn Lane © Adán Medrano, courtesy Texas Tech University Press