My menu for Texas Independence Day

While it may still be chilly and cold, I love this time of year, as the promise of spring is so close. Dreaming of wildflowers and warmer weather helps me get through the iciest and coldest of days. And just think, in a few weeks we’ll be seeing bluebonnets!

Some of you have asked where I’ve been lately. Well, the past month I have been away from my kitchen working on a project, and haven’t been able to make any new recipes to share with you. (This project is very exciting, though, and I can’t wait to tell you more about it!)

That said, Texas Independence Day is coming up on March 2. While you never need an excuse to celebrate Texas, here are some favorite dishes from my archives that are perfect for honoring such a momentous day.

Happy birthday, Texas! And I'm looking forward to spending more time with y'all soon!

Appetizers:
Bacon jalapeño cheese ball
Bob Armstrong Dip
Guacamole
Nachos
Texas trash

Main dishes:
Beef enchiladas
Chicken-fried steak
Dr Pepper pulled brisket
Frito pie
King Ranch casserole
Peppery pinto beans with sausage
Seven-chile chili
Steak fingers with jalapeño cream gravy

Breads:
Biscuits
Cornbread
Flour tortillas
Jalapeño cheese bread


Desserts:
Chocolate pie
Kolaches
Pecan pie
Ruby Red grapefruit and pecan sheet cake
Ruby Red grapefruit cookies

Chile verde con carne (beef green chili)

Like most people, I grew up eating food cooked in a slow cooker. Whether it was an easy way to have dinner on the table after a long day of work, or a place to park your queso during a party, slow cookers were a large part of my life in Texas. Yet for some reason I never bought my own. I’m not quite sure why though I think it’s probably a space issue more than anything. My kitchen is small and as it is now, my stand mixer lives on my desk. Whenever I thought about getting a slow cooker I wondered where it would go.

Then a bunch of friends started reading a popular book about tidying up and only keeping objects that bring you joy, and I opened my hall closet and realized it was filled with empty shoe boxes and other silly things that would make room for a slow cooker if I threw them away. So I did.

The next morning, I went to the cookware store and bought my slow cooker. As I was checking out in line the cashier asked me what was the first thing I was going to make and I told her I had no idea. She suggested chili. “It’s perfect this time of year.”



Indeed, a few weeks ago I’d made a chile verde con carne (beef green chili) on the stove, which I’d loved and had been eager to make again. And fortunately at home I had all the ingredients to make this green chili, and so began the process of adapting my stovetop recipe for the slow cooker instead.
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Smoky black-eyed pea and sausage soup

A few weeks ago I was visiting family in Oregon. I was staying at my dad’s and as a fellow homesick Texan who enjoys spending time in the kitchen, he has an extensive collection of cookbooks on Texan cuisine. One morning I was flipping through one of his books and saw a recipe for black bean enchiladas. I thought to myself, “That would be fun to make with black-eyed peas for New Year’s Day,” and then started scribbling down notes.

After I returned to New York, I started testing my recipe for black-eyed pea enchiladas. Like most enchilada dishes made from scratch, there were lots of pots, pans, and dishes involved, as well as a list of ingredients as long as my arm. After several hours of cooking and assembling, (with a few emergency trips to the grocery store thrown in for additional ingredients) when I finally sat down to actually taste the enchiladas, I was completely underwhelmed.

Now, it’s not that the enchiladas tasted terrible—I mean, how bad can a molten stack of corn tortillas, salsa, black-eyed peas, and cheese be? But I didn’t love them and after all that time and effort invested, I felt I should be happier about the enchiladas. Perhaps it was that old problem of the cook never appreciating her own food, but I usually enjoy what I make and these did not make me smile.



So, it was back to the kitchen if I was going to come up with something new to serve for the New Year. Fortunately, I still had some dried black-eyed peas on hand, as well as bacon, smoky kielbasa, and a bundle of kale. If I added some smoky chipotle chiles and a few spices, I figured I had the workings of a very good soup.
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Gingerbread doughnut muffins

There’s a doughnut store around the corner from me, and while I’m not usually tempted by their doughnuts (my best strategy is to just look the other way when I walk by their shop), this time of year they sell a gingerbread doughnut that I have been curious about.

Unfortunately, this doughnut shop has a tendency to sell out of their more popular doughnuts, and by the time I finally gathered the courage to actually go to the shop and get a gingerbread doughnut, they no longer had any on hand.

Yes, I say courage because this doughnut shop’s doughnuts are all very appealing and yet they’re also very expensive. Whenever I do make it in there I never make it out without spending a small fortune on fried treats. It’s a dangerous place! In any case, because of this, I decided that I would take matters into my own hands.



When I first started blogging almost 10 years ago, doughnut muffins were all the rage. It seemed almost every food blogger at the time was doing some variation of these baked little cakes, but for some reason I never got around to making my own. Well, as Christmas is approaching and I like to have lots of treats on hand for breakfast, I decided that a gingerbread doughnut muffin just might be the way to go.
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Spicy pecan brittle

This is the season of giving, and one of my favorite things to give is candy. Texans have a long tradition of making and sharing candy at the holidays, and my family is no different. When I was young, a Christmas visit wasn’t complete until a tin of homemade candy had been passed around, and we’d enjoy everything from pralines to divinity.

One of my favorite candies, however, is nut brittle. Typically in the past, I’ve usually made it with peanuts. This, of course, is the traditional nut brittle and it’s no wonder as those nuts go very well with the crisp candy coating. That said, there are a couple of people on my list this year who can’t have peanuts because of allergies, and so I decided that my nut brittle this year would have to be made with something else instead.



Texas’s state nut is the pecan, so it didn’t take me long to decide to make pecan brittle. While you don’t see it quite as often as you do peanut brittle, pecan brittle definitely has its place in the pantheon of Texan confections. Matter of fact, when I was doing research I found a host of candy-store advertisements from the late 1800s and early 1900s, and whenever they mentioned pecan brittle, they showcased it as an especially rare treat.
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Texas turkey chili

The other day someone asked me what I always keep in my refrigerator. After going through the usual list of things such as salsa, cilantro, and jalapeños, I added that you will usually find a jar of chili gravy in my refrigerator, as well. “What do you do with it?” he asked. I then explained that I use it for impromptu batches of enchiladas, drizzle it on eggs, or pair it with leftover meat to make a quick and flavorful stew.

Now, speaking of leftover meat, one of my favorite things about Thanksgiving is the few days afterwards when you have a refrigerator loaded with food. Not only does this mean you get to enjoy cold slices of pecan pie for breakfast, but there’s also a mountain of leftover turkey begging to be made into new and exciting dishes, too.

Enter my jar of chili gravy. When you take shredded cooked turkey and then cook it in a sauce that’s rich with chiles, onion, garlic, and spices, you soon have an easy Tex-Mex dish that can be served in a bowl, scooped into tortillas, or even rolled into cheesy chili enchiladas. For lack of a better name, I like to call this marriage of chiles and meat Texas turkey chili.



Now, typically Texas chili is made with beef. That said, there are a handful of recipes out there for something called Texas turkey chili, yet these dishes are not very chili like at all. For instance, when it comes to spice they only have a slight shake of chili powder along with perhaps a jalapeño slice or two. There are also always beans, along with tomatoes and bell peppers. Matter of fact, the final result seems more like a turkey, tomato, and bean soup.
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Jalapeño creamed corn

“It’s all good, but whatever you do, you must get the creamed corn,” said the woman waiting in line behind me at Killen’s Barbecue. It was my first time to visit this new Pearland, Texas smoked-meat hot spot, and she and I had been discussing the menu. I’d heard good things about owner Ronnie Killen’s brisket, beef ribs, sausages—heck, all of the smoked meats had been lauded as some of the best new barbecue in the state. So her recommendation surprised me.

“I don’t usually order sides at a barbecue place,” I said. She shook her head and said, “Trust me. You don’t want to miss this corn.” She was correct. While I did enjoy the ribs, the turkey, and the brisket, it was the corn that I kept dipping into, savoring each sweet and creamy bite.

After my visit to Killen’s I went to visit a friend, and when I told her where I’d been the first thing she said was, “Did you try the creamed corn?” Then two weeks later, when I was back in New York, another person who’d eaten there said the same thing. Clearly, Killen’s much-lauded creamed corn merited investigation so I could cook something similar in my own kitchen.



A little research lead me to his recipe. Ronnie Killen had generously shared his technique with several Houston media outlets, and I discovered his method is quite simple. He uses fresh cobs of corn and after he removes the kernels, he infuses cream and milk with the cobs for a spell, so the cobs’ sweet corn flavor will enrich the dish even more. Lots of butter and a bit of sugar also add to the dish's rich appeal.
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