No one knows Texan food like Stephen Pyles, acclaimed chef of Star Canyon and AquaKnox restaurants in Dallas. Ever since the release of his best-selling New Texas Cuisine, cooks around the country have been hungry for more. The wait is over with New Tastes from Texas , a companion to Stephan's new public television series of the same name. This glorious, lushly illustrated new collection of recipes takes readers on a culinary tour of the great state, from the Gulf Coast to the great wide west, from the bayou to the border.
I'm a Texan, and love the type of food Stephan is famous for. I lived at Blue Mesa, Chuy's, and other Texan institutions when I lived there. HOWEVER-- that is when the food is served to me in a restaurant.
When you're cooking it, using THIS book, it is an exercise in frustration!!! I was having a Southwestern dinner party, and finally got around to preparing some of the many wonderful sounding recipes in here.
THIS is one of those frustrating cookbooks that can't just give you a full recipe. Each recipe has ingredients that are SEPARATE recipes on their own, and the prep steps for them is often just about as long as the other full length recipe! So that for each recipe, you see things like "cactus puree (see p. 58), masa dough (see p. 62)," in addition to the other ingredients. After enough of these, you get really freaking tired of flipping back and forth and back and forth!
Plus, the Heaven and Hell cake was a big, fat flop. I am a helluva cook, but the cake was a disaster. We began calling it "World Trade Center 7." I sold the cookbook to a Half Price Books not long after. I don't need the hassle. Try again, Stephan. Chefs may love this book. Real people trying to use it will be much less impressed.
It seems that Mr. Pyles took the influences of Texan food and tried to make it gourmet. Though I might enjoy eating some of these dishes in a restaurant, they're too expensive and time consuming to consider making at home.