The recipes in the book are presented in menus with side dishes, breads, and/or dessert because the author felt it was important to provide a sense of context for the foods she loves. They should begin running in the late fall, so keep an eye on local listings. The new season of Guerra's program is being shot by San Antonio public television station KLRN in the kitchen of the new Broadway Central Market there, but will feature clips of life on the cattle ranch and other points of interest in the border region. The shows ran on PBS stations around the state last spring, including KLRU-2, cable channel 20. Armed with a major sponsorship from the HEB grocery chain and support from Valley food producers, Guerra shot the first 26 episodes of Texas Provincial Kitchen on her family's working cattle ranch near the Texas/Mexico border. At about the same time, Guerra approached the Rio Grande Valley PBS affiliate KMBH about producing a cooking show based on her book. She began compiling recipes and teaching cooking classes to preserve the heritage she valued and soon found herself in possession of enough material for a cookbook. The remoteness of the Santillana Ranch dictated daily cooking, but Guerra began to notice that the culinary heritage with which she'd grown up was slowly being lost to convenience foods and equipment such as microwave ovens. My fondness for regional and community cookbooks is well-documented, and I'm pleased to have all three of these volumes in my cookbook library.Īuthor Melissa McAllen Guerra is a fifth-generation Texan who lives on a working cattle ranch in far South Texas, not too far from where her family gave land and a name to the city of McAllen.
One of the books is the self-published companion volume to an upcoming PBS television series, another garnered the Tabasco Award for the best community cookbook published in 1997, and the third is filled with historical recipes and reminiscences of a bygone era in deep East Texas. Three fascinating collections of regional Texas recipes by non-professional cooks appeared within the last 12 months, each one demonstrating the depth of culinary diversity in the food of the Lone Star State. But chefs weren't the only ones capturing the culinary essence of Texas on the page.
Two noted chefs came out with new cookbooks (see "Hot Sauce Insert"), featuring their interpretations of dishes that push the envelope of what we consider Texas cuisine, while a third compiled and translated heirloom recipes from Mexican-American families all over the country.
#PAN DE POLVO COOKIES FOR SALE PROFESSIONAL#
The past year has beena very good one for publishing Texas cooks, professional and amateur alike.