The Texas Mexican Plant-Based Cookbook

In 15,000-year-old archaeological sites throughout Texas and Northeastern Mexico, records left by Coahuiltecan, Karankawa, Apache, and other Indigenous communities tell stories about their food practices, the roots of Texas Mexican cuisine. Author and chef Adán Medrano, a Coahuiltecan descendant, has made it his life’s work to document these food practices and the stories they narrate. In The Texas Mexican Plant-Based Cookbook , he honors the plant-based cooking history, traditions, and knowledge that make up the comida casera (home cooking) of today’s Texas Mexican community. Each of the 90 kitchen-tested recipes includes detailed cooking instructions intended for contemporary home cooks. Headnotes for each recipe describe how the dish entered the region’s culinary traditions and became integral to the culinary act of meaning-making in the community. The book provides explanations of the origins of iconic ingredients like squash, cactus, mesquite, and sunflowers, as well as more recent, post-Conquest ingredients like watermelon, rice, and cauliflower. Texas ancestors ate pecans and black walnuts, along with acorns, grapes, berries, seeds, and tubers. Mesquite and cactus were central to celebrations. Home cooks of all levels can discover and reclaim ancient ingredients and simple techniques in this volume and come away with a deeper knowledge of the agricultural systems that belie our current foodways.

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