Nouveau Texas Cooking
What is nouveau Texas Cooking? Some say that it is cowboy cooking turned gourmet, such as hearty steaks combined with unusual sauces. Unusual? The history of Texas, living under six flags, would mean an eclectic blend of influences. This is Terry's answer, one that should establish a definition and clear away any confusion:
" A cuisine evolves with the arrival of new ethnic influences, new foods introduced to the area, even new appliances or newly discovered cooking methods (such as blackening, for example, which actually became a new method of cooking food, courtesy of Paul Prudhomme). So, of course Texas food is not the same as it was 100 years ago or even 25 years ago. It's just the way we eat in Texas today.
That has been highly influenced by the availability of more varieties of chiles to the general public and to restaurants, by the great Asian influence in Texas. There is a large Asian population in Dallas and Houston as well as along the Texas coast wherever there is a harbor. (They are fishermen.) But it's primarily based on the building blocks of the past - our love affair with beef, the Mexican and German influences - Chicken-Fried steak evolved form Schnitzel- from chuckwagon cooking over fir and the traditions of Chile.
We've built on these basics, borrowed from later influences and added new ingredients as they became known. I like to call the way we eat in Texas today "upscale downhome". It's got some gloss and a truffle here and there, but its foundation is in those basics from the pioneer, and yes, the cowboys. Those rugged and very hard-working pioneers established the tradition of those piled-high plates. BIG has always been synonymous with Texas food."
Influences on Texas Cooking
In the beginning of Texas' history were the Native Americans. Among them were many peaceable peoples, and the Spanish called them Tejas or friends. No flags waved over the plains when the Native Americans occupied the land, but as European explorers discovered the possibilities of the wide open spaces and scrambled for possession, a total of six flags flew over Texas.
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