lsanderson | Oct. 24th, 2007

A Celebration of Tex-Mex, Without Apology
By JOE DRAPE

WHEN I arrived in Texas as a college freshman in 1980, there were a great many things I knew nothing about. Among them were Tony Lama boots, espadrilles and Tex-Mex food. I remain clueless about the Lone Star State’s indigenous footwear, but I continue to search for the perfect enchilada.

Somehow, I blame Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac. Mr. Buckingham and I have never discussed the essence of Tex-Mex. We have never spoken at all. His road manager, however, gave me and each of my three buddies $20 and a ticket to a Fleetwood Mac concert so he could cut the line at Herrera’s, then a 30-seat cafe on its way to becoming a Dallas institution.

When you’re 18 at a B.Y.O.B. place with a cooler full of beer, being paid to wait is not a problem. Once we sat down, I understood why Mr. Buckingham shelled out $80 to get at the $5 combination platter. What I tasted for the first time was extraordinary: Cheese, meat and chili gravy all swirled together, encased in tortillas and buttressed by rice and refried beans.

I’ve been hooked ever since, which has become a curse. It’s hard to be a Tex-Mex aficionado when you don’t live in Texas. More

Recipe: Lime Soup (Sopa De Lima)
Recipe: Chiles Rellenos

An Editing Life, a Book of Her Own
By JULIA MOSKIN

IF there’s one person I blame for the multitude of mustards and olive oils cluttering my cabinets — also the sticky shelf with three kinds of soy sauce, five vinegars, pomegranate molasses and a once-used bottle of Marsala — it’s Judith Jones.

Ms. Jones may not be the mother of the revolution in American taste that began in the 1960s and transformed the food Americans cook at home. But she remains its most productive midwife. As the book editor who brought towering figures such as Julia Child, Marcella Hazan, Claudia Roden, Edna Lewis and Marion Cunningham into print, she has exposed millions of Americans to new ways of thinking and tasting during her 50-year career. More

If It Sounds Bad, It’s Got to Be Good
By MELISSA CLARK

THERE are some restaurant dishes that I order because they sound better than everything else on the menu, and there are some I order because they sound worse. My reasoning goes like this: If a chef dares to offer something as unappealing as, say, a raw kale salad, chances are it’s fantastic.

I’ve played this game at restaurants all over the world, with mixed results. But when I score I score big, with a perspective-changing moment that can inspire pure glee.

This is what I hoped for with the raw kale salad at Franny’s in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.

I’ll admit that having ordered and adored a raw brussels sprouts salad at Franny’s the year before, the risk factor skewed pretty low. In that salad the chef, Andrew Feinberg, doused the plate of shredded crucifers with so much olive oil, lemon juice, salt, toasted walnuts and pecorino cheese that its sulfurous and often harsh disposition had no choice but to mellow and sweeten.

Even so, raw kale sounded more challenging. Brussels sprouts are like mini cabbages, and don’t we eat raw cabbage in coleslaw all the time? I could think of no raw kale analogy.

Nonetheless, I ordered the salad. It arrived as a shadowy green mountain under a blizzard of grated pecorino Rossellino cheese (a nutty Italian sheep’s milk cheese with a ruddy rind) and bread crumbs, flavored with lemon and chili. Tangy, spicy, slick with good oil and crunchy from the earthy-flavored kale, it was as pungent and rich as it was fresh and clean tasting; a veritable raw foods epiphany. The minute I left the restaurant I craved another.

Having made the brussels sprouts salad many times since I first tried it, I figured I could easily reproduce the kale salad at home as well. So the next time I saw nice-looking kale, I bought some. I chopped it up, tossed it with all the requisite ingredients, including some pecorino Rossellino I had managed to track down, and bit into a huge forkful. Then I chewed. And chewed, and chewed. I’ll spare you the details.

That’s when I realized that not all kale was created equal. Joshua McFadden, the chef de cuisine at Franny’s, who came up with the recipe, uses inky Tuscan kale. Until that moment I had thought the various kales were pretty interchangeable, a quality I now know they possess only when cooked.

Tuscan kale, also called black kale or lacinato kale, has a more delicate leaf and a softer stem than the sturdier, bright green, curly stuff, and the differences are glaringly apparent when munched raw.

I ended up sautéing my failed salad and enjoying it just fine. But it didn’t satisfy the craving. More