New documentary ‘Truly Texas Mexican’ traces the indigenous food heritage of the borderlands

In his upcoming documentary Actually Texas Mexican, Adán Medrano traces the meals heritage of the Texas-Mexico borderlands, a legacy that lives on right now within the comida casera (residence cooking) of Texas Mexican kitchens throughout southern Texas.

Actually Texas Mexican tempts our senses with tomato salsa made in a molcajete, an historical Mesoamerican mortar and pestle; simmering, brick-red adobo sauce for ancho chile meatballs; and barbacoa de pozo, a standard, earthen-pit-cooked cow’s head.

The borderlands, Medrano explains, have been peopled by indigenous hunter-gatherers lengthy earlier than there was a Texas-Mexico border. Actually, lengthy earlier than there was a Texas. Or a Mexico. Even a Spain. And earthen-pit cooking? Proof traces its use again at the least 15,000 years within the San Antonio space.

However none of this wealthy historical past was a part of Medrano’s research in 2010 on the Culinary Institute of America Texas campus in San Antonio. He was troubled on the time by the absence of any point out of indigenous Texas Mexican delicacies.

“There was no presence of my meals,” he says, of the comida casera he grew up with in his mom’s San Antonio kitchen. “I knew our story had not been informed, however I didn’t understand it was so invisible.”

The documentary is a part of his mission to vary that. Already it’s been picked up by a number of Texas PBS stations, the place it is going to air later this 12 months or early subsequent. The movie will even be obtainable by means of Vimeo on demand, in addition to different retailers. For the most recent on viewing data, go to the web site at trulytexasmexican.com.

Texas Mexican meals isn’t Tex-Mex, Medrano emphasizes, the broadly fashionable Texas delicacies created a century in the past by and for Anglos. Neither is it the formal delicacies of Mexico that instructors introduced on the CIA. And it has modified by means of the years and centuries as new cultures, notably Europeans, introduced their very own influences ― all absorbed within the Texas Mexican cookpot.

In Actually Texas Mexican, we journey with the Houston author and chef to numerous locales, primarily ladies’s kitchens from the Rio Grande Valley north to San Antonio. Why ladies’s kitchens? As a result of ladies have been the carriers of the normal methods.

“Girls have a key function that’s been disregarded of historical past,” Medrano says. The movie was impressed by his e-book Truly Texas Mexican, A Native Culinary Heritage in Recipes (2014), a part of the Texas Tech Press Grover E. Murray Research within the American Southwest collection.

We go to San Antonio chef and caterer Rosalía Vargas making adobo the identical manner her mom and grandmother made the redolent, chile-infused sauce. Medrano takes us to his niece Christine Ortega’s San Antonio residence for a standard cabeza de pozo, a cow’s head seasoned, then wrapped and positioned in a single day to prepare dinner in an earthen pit oven. The fashionable-day delicacy, says Joseph Doria, normal supervisor of Bolner’s Meat Co. in San Antonio, was “survival meals for us.”

“They [our forebears] have been sustained on the identical meals 1,000 years in the past ― nopalitos, onions, fruits, pecans, tomatoes, squash, beans,” Medrano says. All are Native American meals, together with acquainted, ubiquitous corn.

And few of us might understand {that a} pure salt lake exists north of Harlingen close to Raymondville that was important to early cultures. La Sal Del Rey was a vacation spot for indigenous peoples from as distant as central Mexico, based on historian Homero Vera.

“Indians trekked right here for salt,” Vera explains within the movie. “The indigenous folks misplaced an engine of stability,” he says, “when the Spanish arrived.” The invaders claimed the mineral rights for the king of Spain and slapped a tariff on the valuable mineral.

The movie brings up some uncomfortable questions: Who’re the natives, who “owns” the land, and who’re the immigrants? At one level, it challenges the Texas Historic Fee to rewrite its racist narrative of the Karankawa Indians on its plaque in Corpus Christi. However the story is sophisticated: It was the Spanish who introduced cattle to the area for that conventional barbacoa and the cow’s milk for the custard-like jericalla.

The documentary, as a lot a valentine as a deep dive into the borderlands’ foodways and historical past, was borne out of an internet alternate between Medrano and Uruguayan movie director Aníbal Capoano, who felt strongly that the story was a common one.

“I began speaking with the director on-line,” Medrano says, “and he stated, ‘Do a movie about your e-book, about indigenous meals and the facility it had.’” And so he did, in the end working with Capoano to deliver the venture to fruition.

Kim Pierce is a Dallas freelance author.

Ancho Chile Meatballs

4 ancho chiles

1 white onion

3 garlic cloves

2 teaspoons recent Mexican oregano

3 teaspoons salt (divided use)

1 cup water

1 tablespoon canola oil

1/2 cup milk

3 ounces bread slices, crusts eliminated, damaged up into 1-inch items (about 1 1/2 cups)

1 pound floor pork

1 pound 96% lean floor beef

1 egg, crushed

2 cups diced tomatoes

2 cups rooster inventory

1/4 teaspoon sugar

1/2 tablespoon white vinegar

Preheat oven to 400 F.

Take away the seeds from the chiles by reducing a slit lengthwise in every chile to open it and take away the stem with the connected seeds. Take away all different seeds within the pod.

Place the chiles in a big pot with water to cowl. Carry to a boil, flip off warmth, and let chiles steep for quarter-hour to rehydrate. Drain and permit to chill. Discard the water.

Place the chiles, onion, garlic, oregano and 1 teaspoon salt in a blender with 1 cup water and mix on excessive till the paste is totally clean, with no giant particles. Add slightly extra water if wanted. If giant particles stay, pressure the paste by means of a fine-mesh sieve.

Warmth the canola oil in a Dutch oven and add the chile puree – with warning, as a result of it could splatter because the liquid meets the oil. Fry for 10 minutes. The colour will deepen and the puree will thicken. Put aside.

In a bowl, pour the milk, add the bread and put aside.

In giant bowl, combine collectively the pork and beef. Add the crushed egg and a pair of remaining teaspoons salt. Squeeze extra milk from the bread and blend the bread into the meat utilizing your palms or a big spatula or spoon. Add 8 tablespoons or ½ cup of the ancho chile puree to the meat and blend completely. Set puree apart.

Kind the meat into 40 (1 ½-inch) balls and place them on a big baking sheet. Roast within the oven for 12 to fifteen minutes, till browned and crispy on the surface. Take away from oven and permit to relaxation for 10 minutes earlier than serving.

To the remaining chile puree within the Dutch oven, add the tomatoes, rooster inventory, sugar and vinegar and convey to a boil. Prepare dinner for half-hour till the adobo begins to thicken. Style and proper the salt.

Serve the meatballs on a plate with the adobo sauce. Makes 6 to eight servings.

Supply: Actually Texas Mexican: A Native Culinary Heritage in Recipes

Braised Beef for Barbacoa Tacos

That is Adán Medrano’s adaptation of the Barbacoa De Pozo ― the normal earthen-pit-roasted cow’s head ― for the fashionable kitchen, made with beef chuck.

2 kilos boneless beef chuck

3 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed

1/2 white onion

1/2 teaspoon crushed black peppercorns

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 (2-inch) sprigs recent Texas Mexican oregano

Sizzling corn tortillas, a wide range of salsas, recent coarsely chopped cilantro and Mexican lime wedges

Preheat oven to 200 F.

Place the meat in a Dutch oven and fill midway with water. Add the garlic, onion, black peppercorns, salt and oregano, and convey to a boil. Flip off the warmth.

Cowl tightly and switch to oven and prepare dinner for six to eight hours. Flip the meat over as soon as throughout cooking.

When beef is completed, place it on a reducing board or in a big bowl and, utilizing forks or picket spoons, pull the meat aside. Modify the salt. Hold the meat heat for making tacos.

To make tacos, serve with sizzling corn tortillas, a wide range of salsas, recent coarsely chopped cilantro and Mexican lime wedges. Makes 8 servings.

Supply: Actually Texas Mexican: A Native Culinary Heritage in Recipes

Squash and Corn Stew

2 tatuma (Mexican heirloom) or zucchini squash

1 tablespoon canola oil

1/2 white onion, reduce into skinny vertical slices

1 ear corn, kernels reduce off near the cob

2 Roma tomatoes, diced into small cubes

1/4 cup water

1/2 teaspoon salt, or to style

Lower off and discard each suggestions of the squash. Slice the squash lengthwise into quarters, then slice the quarters into ½-inch wedges. Put aside.

Warmth the oil in a 12-inch skillet over medium warmth. Add the onion and prepare dinner 3 to five minutes, till it begins to turn into translucent.

Add the corn and tomatoes and prepare dinner one other 2 minutes, stirring.

Add the squash, water and salt to the skillet. Cowl and prepare dinner for five to 7 minutes, or till the squash has launched its juices (delicate however not mushy). Style and alter salt.

Makes 4 servings.

Supply: Don’t Count the Tortillas: The Art of Texas Mexican Cooking by Adán Medrano (2019)

Paloma Grapefruit Cocktail

1 recent Mexican lime

Salt, to coat rim of glass

2 ounces tequila

4 ounces (or 1/2 cup) recent grapefruit juice

1/2 teaspoon sugar

2 ounces (or 1/4 cup) glowing water

Rim a tall glass with lime juice and coat with salt. Put aside.

In a shaker, add tequila, grapefruit juice, sugar and a squeeze of lime juice. Stir or shake till sugar is dissolved.

Fill the salt-rimmed glass with ice, and pour the tequila-grapefruit juice and glowing water over the ice and serve.

Makes 1 serving.

Supply: Don’t Count the Tortillas: The Art of Texas Mexican Cooking by Adán Medrano (2019)