Domain: A TEXAS MONTHLY Editorial Supplement
Specialty of the House
A collection of home cooks share their culinary triumphs—from those secret recipes on fading index cards to those word-of-mouth favorites that everyone envies.
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Anne Gile’s Vegetable Pie
Anne Giles’s secrets for the perfect party are out. This Austin homemaker and mother of two (Jackson, 2; and Kathryn Estelle, 6) has long been known for her dinner parties. She and her husband, real estate developer Jackson Giles, have delighted crowds of guests with their easygoing but exquisitely detailed evenings at home. “I love to entertain,” she says, “but I really enjoy the organizing and the production part of it. By the time the party happens, I’ve done everything that needs to be done in advance.”
Anne Giles doesn’t mind leaking that kind of information. But the recipe for her vegetable pie, the rich, earthy, pizzalike concoction featured here (try it with a simple green salad for a quick, satisfying meal), has her worried—it’s a victim of poor security in the kitchen. “One friend kept bugging me for the recipe,” Giles says. “She even chased my husband down in the airport to ask him for it. So finally I broke down and gave it to her. But she fixed it for her bridge club, and now it’s all over Austin.” With culinary secrets this good, who can blame friends for a little espionage? Vegetable Pie Recipe
The Whistlers’ Orange Pancakes
The American family at breakfast time. It’s the standard morning scenario for every sitcom family from Donna Reed’s to Bill Cosby’s, but for the Barry Whistler family, that big breakfast happens just on Sunday. The rest of the week Dad is busy at his namesake gallery in Dallas’ Deep Ellum, representing such artists as Clyde Connell, Danny Williams, Ann Stautberg, and Jack Mims. “The gallery is still in the growing stage,” Barry says, “so it’s not like I can leave and let the place run itself.” Mom Christy and son Marley are busy five days a week as the fashion coordinator for display at the downtown Neiman Marcus and as a second-grade student at St. John’s Episcopal School, respectively.
Most days start with cereal and toast ASAP; then it’s off to school, the store, and the gallery. But the seventh day is the Whistlers’ day of rest. They spend it together simply, starting with the family favorite, Christy’s orange pancakes, served with plenty of real maple syrup. (Christy also recommends such variations as chopped nuts in the batter and a topping of strawberry preserves or honey with sour cream). Barry helps set the table and pours the milk and juice. “I don’t really do much of the cooking at all,” he confesses. Marley, who wants to be a comedian when he grows up, breaks from the comics to break the eggs. Orange Pancakes Recipe
Robert Tabak’s Smoked and Grilled Shrimp
Robert Tabak smokes food the way most of us heat up leftovers—a lot. “I’ll prepare two or three things,” he says, “like grilled and smoked swordfish and shrimp on the side. And I love to grill vegetables—onions, peppers, and new potatoes.” A Dallas native, the 33-year-old architect (he designed the Las Colinas restaurant complex) says barbecue is a lifelong passion that kicked into high gear when he was an undergrad at the University of Texas at Austin. “I lived with two guys from Memphis, Tennessee, the home of hickory-smoked cooking,” Tabak says. “They taught me a lot. I called it Barbecue 101.”
With his trusty Ranchwood smoker, Tabak has created a number of adventurous recipes. His smoked sugar-cured salmon has taken months to test and develop, and his smoked-tuna salad leaves the familiar, bland sandwich stuffing light-years behind. But his crowning achievement is this spicy recipe for smoked and grilled shrimp. “The secret is cooking the shrimp slowly,” he says, pointing out the advantage of a steady, low, smoky fire that infuses food with flavor rather than incinerating it. Smoked and Grilled Shrimp Recipe
Garry Olah’s Clay-Pot Orange Duckling
“The Italians have always liked Texas, and we talked them into going into Houston,” says Garry Olah, the 26-year-old business man who brought a little electricity to Houston retail last year with the opening of the first Fiorucci Italian boutique in Texas. For this fashion ambassador—first-generation American of Italian-Hungarian parentage—cooking is of preserving his ethnic heritage. And the kitchen is a good place to meet up with his wife, Kari, a fashion model, after a long day of setting trends. “We’re so busy now, eating in is more special than it used to be,” he says. “Ninety-eight percent of what we cook at home is Italian. We’ve got a baby on the way, and we don’t want our child to lose that culture.”
Of course, clay-pot orange duckling is not exactly Italian. But it was handed down by Garry’s Hungarian grandmother, Louise, and italianized a little by Garry. “I’m betraying my Italian ancestry with this recipe,” Garry admits, “but the Italians do use clay pots. And it’s so simple, we make it all the time. You just throw it together, put it in the oven, and walk away. It’s perfect for an intimate dinner.” Clay-Pot Orange Duckling Recipe
Chris “Whip” Layton’s Two-tone Chili
In the kitchen Chris Layton’s blues turn red-hot. The drummer for Austin-based Double Trouble (the band fronted by guitar samurai Stevie Ray Vaughan), Layton has been a professional musician for twelve years. But he actually has a longer career as an amateur chef and recipe inventor. “I read recipes,” he says, “but I never use them whole. I’ll just take a bit here and a bit there. This chili, for example, was an idea that came from reading another chili recipe. Every time I make it I start messing with it.” Kitchen creativity is Layton’s respite from the cares of the road and the studio: “It’s kind of therapeutic—it’s what I do when I’m home to relax. I’ll be chopping onions, and I can think about the band, the tour, the album, financing, merchandising. I work on new bits for the drums—you hear little rhythms in all that chopping.
“I can’t remember how I got started making chili, but I do remember cooking as early as sixth grade. I made a pizza for the teacher.” Not as convenient as an apple, maybe, but if that pizza was as good as this volcanic magma of a chili, Layton got a lot of extra credit. Two-tone Chili Recipe
Specialty of the House was originally featured in Domain • Fall 1988
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