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.
Everybody’s got one—a famous recipe. Whether presented at a dinner party, at a family supper, or as a holiday gift, it’s a formula that instantly makes folks feel at home, a recipe so close to the person who owns it—and sometimes so closely guarded—that it has become synonymous with its cook. Like Mom’s apple pie.
We wanted those secret recipes. For our first annual “Speciality of the House,” we solicited nominees—no professional chefs, caterers, or cooks—from all over the state. And with a little cajoling, we were able to pry entrées from architects, condiments from collectors, and pancakes from patrons of the arts. Our search turned up a selection of home cooks with recipes that range from haute cuisine to comfort food. Each of these individuals has at least one culinary star turn.
And each of the recipes has a bit of the creator’s personality shining through, from the simmering intensity of a blues musician’s chili to the elegantly sensible vegetable pie of an accomplished hostess. From first course tolast, these dishes are kitchen signatures.
Anthony Frederick’s Crawfish Etouffeé
You can always tell a real Cajun by the way he feels about food. Houston architect Anthony E. Frederick grew up in Abbeville, Louisiana, and his mother was, in his words, “a great country Cajun-style cook.” When he left home to study architecture (at the University of Houston and later at Rice University), he got by on frozen quantities of her gumbos and étouffées that he picked up on trips home. Eventually he learned to do for himself. Between designing houses and such projects as the Richmond gallery and furniture for the Menil Collection, Frederick has become more and more of a chef. Now he and his wife, Patty, cook together and entertain a great deal.
Frederick has recently turned his attention to the subtleties of Creole cuisine (the more refined and internationalized cooking of New Orleans), which he has come to prefer to the bayou rudiments of Cajun dishes. He says, “Creole cooking is spiced with more sophistication than Cajun cooking. And the great variety of seasonings and flavors is helpful to people who live away from the coast, because they can boost the taste of frozen seafood.” Frederick’s recipe for crawfish étouffée is an adaptation from what he calls “the best standard cookbook I’ve seen for classic Louisiana dishes,” The Plantation Cookbook, published by the Junior League of New Orleans. The original recipe is pretty darn good, but Frederick’s version, well, c’est-ci bon. Crawfish Etouffeé Recipe
Olive Hershey’s Peach Ice Cream
Peach ice cream is one of those dishes that resonates with Texan overtones. Even in the fall we remember all those bushels of fruit at summer roadside stands, and we think of cool, fresh peach ice cream. Writer Olive Hershey knows all that. In her own way, she is dedicated to preserving the Texas tradition of fresh peach ice cream. Born in Houston, Hershey has spent much of her life at her family’s ranch in Egypt, Texas. And it was there that the scoop was passed to Hershey by Nellie Moses, her grandmother’s cook. “She’s in her seventies now,” the writer says. “She went to work for my grandmother when she was twelve, and she knows how to cook the best of nearly everything except coq au vin.”
At the same time that Hershey was learning the secrets to silky, tasty ice cream, she was also pursuing her education ( a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin) and her career (teaching creative writing at the University of Houston and Rice University, publishing short stories and poems, and completing her first novel, Truck Dance, to be published by Harper and Row in January).
Both Hershey and Moses are traditionalists all the way when it comes to technique. If you’re going to make ice cream, you have to use an old hand-crank freezer. “Don’t put the finished ice cream in your electric freezer—it gets too hard,” Hershey says. “Just pack some ice around the ice-cream maker, and serve out of that—this stuff is best when it’s a little melty and gooey. You’ll eat it all by the end of the day anyway.” Peach Ice Cream Recipe
John Leeper’s Watermelon Pickle
John Palmer Leeper knows something about the finer things in life. For 35 years he has been the director of San Antonio’s McNay Art Museum; good taste has guided that institution. And among the finer things John Leeper has discovered are pickles. “There’s something enormously satisfying about preserving foods,” he says, “seeing the rows and rows of jars lined when you’re done.” A confident master of the Mason jar, Leeper puffs away at his cigar while the vegetables and melon rind cook and steep (“Ashes don’t hurt the pickles,” he claims). And he has even introduced pickles into the McNay’s trove of other treasures: One holiday season he gave every employee at a museum a jar from his special reserve.
The watermelon pickle recipe, which Leeper calls “wonderful, one of the best I’ve ever come across,” has a familial connection. It belonged to a great-aunt of his and was included years ago in a cookbook published in the Dallas Episcopal St. Monica Guild. Another favorite, for a mustard pickle, is less of an heirloom—it comes from an old edition of The Joy of Cooking. They are both masterpieces in Leeper’s gallery of jarred delicacies. Watermelon Pickle Recipe
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