TASTE BUDS: Tex-Mex Food (Rewind)

Mike and I are both from Texas, so of course we've got to talk about tex mex food.

We have to. This is exciting.

My name is Eva Longoria and I am my te Gomez Rajon and.

Welcome to Hungry for History, a podcast that explores our past and present through food.

On every episode, we'll talk about the history of some of our favorite dishes, ingredients, and beverages.

So make yourself at home, even Brochel, It's been a thing for me in my marriage because I call text mechs. For me is Mexican food, like I've always called it Mexican food in Texas and my husband, who's a Mexican national, we fight about a lot of things, as we've talked about many times on the podcast, flower tortillas versus corn tortillas, the burrito, breakfast, tacos, like, there's just so much. And I I remember when I moved to Los Angeles, was the first time I heard the word text me in

But yeah it's tex mex Like.

I didn't really consider it a whole different thing until I really got versed in astronomy, and I realized, oh my god, it is as It's a whole category in itself.

It's a regional cuisine. It is its own thing, one hundred percent. Because even me growing up in Laredo, first generation, the food that we had at the house was more Mexican food, not necessarily tex Mex, right, but of course it's Laredo, so it is part of that culture. So basically South Texas it's it's a regional cuisine. It's one

So not that I don't remember it.

I mean, I know we're talking like conquest and stuff like that, but I don't remember hearing it as an antiquated word. Tex Mex seems very modern. The word the word text Mex.

It is it is.

And actually Diana Kennedy, who we talked about in one of the episodes, the British born authority on Mexican Food, she was the one that first used the word Texmex in the seventies. She was basically making a clear distinction between Mexican food and everything made north of the border, and it was sort of dismissive.

It's like, this is real and that's text Mex. But tex Mex food is a centuries old cuisine.

This text Mex food that has a lot of cheese, yellow cheese and fried and all of that is an Anglo.

Contribution to the food.

Because the first sort of tex Mex restaurants appeared, or what is called tex Mex now, appeared in San Antonio soon after Texas became part of the US and the Mexicans were being driven out of the city. But all of the Americans that were going to the city on the tex Mex railroad loved.

The Mexican food. They just didn't like Mexicans. They liked their food.

Who Okay.

In nineteen hundred, there was a restaurateur from the Midwest. His name was Otis Farnsworth and he opened up a restaurant called the Original Mexican Restaurant in the San Antonio River Walk, right, So he created this sort of model for tex Mex restaurants and people loved it. That's the first time that we see like the combo plates, you know, you have like andulaa and the.

Be right, theres yeah, and you're like, I.

Want the number five and I want the number two or you know that has these sort of complates aid such a part of the text mex cuisine. And that was actually an idea of one of his employees, a Mexican employee, who was like, oh, let's do this so that non Spanish speaking Americans can then just see the pictures and order the number one or the number two. But the first sort of tex Mex restaurant was created by a Midwesterner, so not even a Mexican, but in San Antonio.

In San Antonio, So would you say San Antonio's the cradle of the tex Mex.

Yes.

And actually the people that really put Texas Mexican food on the map were the San Antonio Chili queens.

Who are the San Antonio Chili Queens.

They were these amazing women that in the eighteen hundreds would actually make chili, which is a big part of that of text mex cuisine is chili. So these women would actually make chili, which is basically meat with it's basically a mole, but more just with chile, it's more a sort of a simple mole. And then they would actually sell them make it at home, and this was our home cooking, right basically the original text mex is

People that were coming into the city. It was such a hub for tourists.

And it was like, oh, this new Mexican world, and they were introducing this Mexican food to this Anglo population. And it was called gardenet on chile and they would serve the garden on chile with flower dirtilla and the cup.

Of gardene chile or chili concarne.

Originally it was called garnet on chile, and then it became Anglo sized into chili concarne.

And then it was chili, and then it was just chili.

So they would make it at home and then like load it onto their wagons and then go sell it to uh tourists.

Mostly right.

It was tourists, it was people coming through the city, right, And this was a big part of the allure of going to San Antonio is to taste the chili from these women.

And they really sort of it became famous.

Everybody wanted to taste the food of these women. And they were these like sort of badass women. And sometimes they would play guitar and they were said to have you know, rolled their own cigarettes with you know, tobacco and they would roll it in corn husks. But they were these just incredible business women and they created this sort of mystique of the Mexican senorita. It was the

Pushed out of the area.

First they were sort of outside of the plazas because it seemed you know, dirty or and it's unsanitory. And then you know, in nineteen thirty seven is when it was like, oh, these women, it's unsanatory. They were banned, and by nineteen forty three they were completely banned. So we didn't see any of the chili queens selling their chili at all anymore, but.

Their presence is well documented in like the newspapers like San Antonio Daily Express in eighteen ninety four had a review of them, and they were talking about, you know, how these chili queens were jolly and they were so they were like ever attentive, and so there's like all of this documentation about this food in eighteen ninety four.

Oh yeah, tons.

And then there were some food reviews that also were not favorable because they were like, oh, this is you know, too hot, too spicy, too Mexican. One of the reviews was the chili queen's food is fire bricks from So I'm assuming that I'm assuming that meant spicy.

Yeah, like you know, this is definitely from hades.

But also that I can see it now because I you know, we're both from Texas.

We have to take Texas history growing up.

But how the upper class of San Antonio saw Mexican food as a threat to not only white workers, but like.

The standard of living.

They were like, god forbid, this becomes more popular than you know, Anglo cuisine. And so I think that's really interesting how food and politics are pretty parallel in the birth of tex mex food.

Absolutely. There was this German born man. His name was William Gebhart and he lived in New Brown Falls, that's like just just outside of center. It's like half an hour awy from San Antonio. And he used to go into San Antonio in the you know, eighteen nineties, early nineteen hundreds, and loved this chili from the chili queens. But it was fresh chiliss. It was just really good home cooking. And he was like, oh, I want to

How to weigh.

He then import chilianchos from Saint Luis Potosi dehydrated these chilis. First he called this powder chili powder dampico dust, and then eventually he made this powder and he developed this eagle chili powder. This man nineteen oh eight he published the first text mex cookbook. A German published the first sort of Texas Mexican cookbook called Mexican Cooking to educate

His chili powder is still super famous.

I mean they sell it everywhere at the atb It's like sort of the chili.

Powder, the oldest one.

But it is interesting that the reason he did that was because if you cooked with ch fresh chilas, it had to be seasonal, and so he wanted to create a different way to have this spice all year round. And so I thought that was pretty innovative of him at the time, to go, how do we keep this flavor year round because the chilas were limited seasons exactly do to the availability. And so yeah, interesting, But you know a lot of people don't understand German settlements were

Where did tekano first come from?

That word According to the Texas State Historical Association, it was defined in eighteen twenty four denoting a Texan of Mexican descent. So it's basically a Mexican Texan, a Texas Texan Mexican, and it can be you know, a Techano could be, like you said, Tejano music, Tejano art, Techano cuisine. It could just be sort of anything from this area. But one thing that is really interesting I think about the area is that we think, you know, there have been indigenous populations in this area.

Of northern Mexico.

There's like fifty different indigenous nations that lived in the state of Texas even before the conquest, right, So there's the don Gawas and the Comanches and the gan Gauas, and it's all of these indigenous groups that when the Spanish came, they became Hispanicized and they became sort of Mexican even though they have deeper roots than that. So this area is so you know, complex, So a lot of Texans that identify themselves with being Mexican even pre date.

When Texas was Mexico, right, So it's so many layers and layers of history.

So it's like Oh, the Haano could be that you know, people that have these indigenous roots, or it could.

Be people like us.

Right, you've been there for your family has been there for centuries. My family has been there since the seventies, right, so not that long. I know you studied Chicano studies, right, is sort of your thing?

Is it the same?

Chicano is more California based. It's a word I never heard of or used until I moved to a Los Angeles And I mean Chicano was a politicized invention when they put it on a census one year to try to group together basically what we now call Latinos. And so they were like, let's put this word. And I think California Mexicans, which are different than Texas Mexicans. California Mexicans reclaimed the word Chicano and made it their own.

You don't see yellow cheeses at all, like in Mexico.

Yeah, you don't really see sea And it's probably in Texas. It was just more available, especially with the railroad right that it's easier to get yellow cheeses from the Midwest than it was to get cheeses from Mexico, So it was just more available.

I just get really mad that tex Mex food is really defined by this yellow cheese, which is very processed American cheese. And I'm like, I wish tex Mex was known for something else because it's like popular text mex foods. Ok so number one, number one, yeah, ko yeah, And so I just feel like, you know, the definition of a lot of text mex food is this highly processed American cheese. So can we make the correlation that it's not the healthiest.

It's not the.

Healthiest because it has become not the healthiest, but the original food of the region. It does not have the yellow cheese and does not have all of this stuff. It's this home cooking that's a lot of you know, mostly plant based, just like most other Mexican food, The yellow cheese and the you know, deep frying and all of that. That's much more of an Anglo addition to the food of the region.

Cheese invented by James Kraft in the nineteen tens, and he invented this method that involved heating the cheddar cheese and whipping air into it, and then it made it more shelf stable, which we like to call processed, so that it could be shipped. And Velveta is like the culmination of his dream to produce this like creamy, consumer friendly cheese. But that has a lot of things in it.

It's highly processed, it lasts forever, and so it was it worked, it was easy for people.

You don't have to go to the store that often.

And it's just it's it's he developed this this stuff. And there are early you know, cookbooks like Junior League cookbooks, Ladies Club cookbooks from the area or from Texas with recipes for velveta or American cheese, which is this cheddar cheese that we're talking about, suggesting.

That people of all classes ate it.

Right.

So it's so interesting when become food becomes.

A class thing, right, it's like, oh yeah, yeah, everybody eats this.

This yellow cheese.

After the break, we're gonna talk about some of our most popular.

Tex Mex dishes.

Oh, and the Freedo pie.

Don't go anywhere. I use rotel in everything. I literally travel with rotel because to have tomatoes and green chilies together in this beautiful marriage you can put. I put it in my in my re fried beans. I put it in my chadrow beans. I put it in my cassel, I put it in my fitheo, I put it in my right I put rotel in everything because it's so easy.

Yeah, I had honestly had never even heard of rotel before I started doing the Text Mex research.

No, I've never heard of it. Now I have to get it. And it's this signature.

Blend of tomatoes canned with spicy green chillis. It was invented by Carl Rotel in Elsa, Texas.

I don't even know where Elsa, Texas is.

Oh, I know where Elsa, Texas is in South Texas. Elsa, Texas is where where our ranch was, Like it's in Edinburgh and McAllen. It's like over there in Hidaligo County. Yeah, so it's super South Texas.

But is this guy? So his name was carl or Carlos.

Carl Rotel, and it's spelled r o e t t e l e so spelled different, and then he thought that the customers would find it really difficult to pronounce his name.

So it was shortened to row our Oh.

Dash t e l It's it's one of my favorite products to cook with. And maybe it's because I'm I'm text mex.

Yeah, yeah, totally, that's so funny.

A couple of other I think textmex Staples is the way we make inchiladas because there's in chiladas in Mexico. But I think in chiladas and Texas are super different than oh my gosh, than in chiladas in Mexico.

Completely different, yeah, completely different.

I feel like in chilada's in Texas it's mostly red, the red sauce. It's more humani, right, and there they have the yellow cheese or they have the yellow cheese on top. In Mexico, there are so many other variations.

There's the green ones, there's a mule in.

Chilaas there's a like different ones, but they're very.

Different than the Texas ones.

Yeah, if I make Mexican in chiladas, like in Mexico, I cook my chicken, I put it in my tomatio salsa. I usually use a white cheese. I use Crema Mexicana. Like, it's definitely a different things, not sour cream, not sour cream not so when I cook. In the States, there was this brand called Wolf Brand Chili. Did you eat Wolf Brand chili?

Growing up?

I never had chili growing up at home because in my house it was you know, more mex not the text mex So.

I've never had canned chili.

Like even to this day, I would have, Well, maybe I have probably like going, you know somewhere else, but yeah, I never had inchiladas with chili or anything like that.

Oh my god. That's the only in Chila that I knew.

My mom would buy these cans of Wolf Brand chili, which is chili concarne, and there was a recipe on the back of the can.

On how to make the inchiladas.

And that's like I've searched my whole life for Wolf Brand chili. There's a place that sells it in California, but it's mostly a text Mex brand and you just heat up the chili and you cook your tortilla, roll it in the chili, top it with the yellow cheese and it's delicious. My best friend from Texas for her birthday, she always asked me, will you please make me Wolf Brand in chiladas? Oh?

Really, yeah, that's in Chilada.

Also that the thing that's very Texas, very thick on a very text Mex for me, I grew up with it was the Freedo pie.

Freedom grow up with a Freedo.

Pie and school, not at home, but in school they used to have. It's basically a Freedo bag, opened up the Freedo bag and then with a dot with like a huge scoop of chili. It's the text Mex Chila kiles fie yea.

I didn't realize it was basically Chila kiles, you know, but it is. But now I love Freedo pies. I had it every day.

For lunch, I think for four years straight.

In high school, and the fact that it was like a lunch item at school was like, I wonder if it.

Is I mean, it's that is it's so Texas.

They would slice the bag, the snack bag, so like the individual serving, you slice it on the side, not the top, the side, and you just pour your chili right into the friedo bag and then you put the cheese on it.

I mean, honestly, anything with frido. Fritos are the most delicious thing in the world. I have to say, I love Frito's. They're the best. Other text mixings the puffy taco.

Yes, frying corn tortillas in general is a text mexing, not just for fuffy tacos. I make I fry more tortillas for a lot of things. And so I think that the frying of the corn tortilla is not Mexican. Mexican's just heated up on the komal.

But then you also have things like can you cut down? You have the salvotes and those are fried.

It's basically like a puffy taco.

They're fried corn mass. They're a little bit thicker. But it's this similar idea, right, So sort of frying it and then shaping it and also putting like the you know the sweat of iceberg lattice, yeah, you know all of that, and the and the puffy cheese.

And there's also fajitas. Of course that's a very.

Texas thing, super tex mex Northern Mexico, which is grilled skirt skirt steak, although and I don't know if that's it's tex mex but also Northern Mexico they just call it arara, so it's a different sort of thing, but it's basically there's so much meat in the area.

Textbanksuit is heavy, heavy, heavy meat.

Well we call in Mexico they call thostadas.

We call chalupa chalupas.

I love.

But it's the same thing, right.

But it's the same thing, Yeah, just chia bus because I grew up calling them both chilopus sostadas at home.

It was the SaaS. Outside it was a chiluba. But it's the same thing.

Here's the other thing.

In Mexico, taqitos or tacos, takitos. Takitos are the a rold flout us call them flout.

Us, Yes, we call them.

Mexico they call them tacitos. And the other probably my favorite.

This is my favorite.

Text mex food is breakfast tacos.

So breakfast tacos is like, there's like this whole controversy, right, San Antonio claims to have invented the breakfast that got awesome, claims to invent the freakfast taco.

But it's like, isn't breakfast? Aren't they just like a thing?

I mean, I remember there was a place in Laredo called Cortula. It was a restaurant and they used to have like their breakfast tacos were amazing. But it's just a flower tortilla, right right with? I mean, how is it a text that's I don't understand how it's a text mex thing.

Well, first of all, because it has a flower tortilla, right.

Okay, Yeah, in itself that's okay, Because here's the thing in Mexico, even in the north where they eat flower tortillas in Monterey, they're very thin and translucent.

They're very different text mex flower tortillas are thick like a peita bread. They're thick like non like Indian bread. You know, they're thick, and so that in itself makes a breakfast taco very different. So you make which I make them every morning. I make breakfast tacos every morning. I make my flower tortillas from scratch. They're very thick, and then you make potato and egg. You can make

I there's this restaurant that every time I go to Laredo, I always have to go to.

It's down the street from my house.

It's called Danny's and it's it's like a local, a Laredo chain.

They have the best breakfast.

I don't eat eggs, but theirs I will eat eggs there.

Al that's the only place that I lead the eggs.

But they have machakallo, which is the dried shredded which is very northern. Yeah, that's very northern Mexico. In Laredo you see it a lot as well. I don't know if you could consider it tex Mex or if it's more Northern Mexico.

But in Laredo you see a.

Lot of machacado and it's that cooked together in a breakfast taco. Oh my god, it's it's it's amazing. It's the most delicious thing. So I guess it's more of a of a of a Laredo Tex Mex thing because it's the Yeah, I normally like them really paper thin, but these are like thick and kind of chewy and delicious.

I'm so happy y'all went on this, uh basically trip down memory lane with Mike and I with text Mexmex.

So good, so good. Thank you for listen today.

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