By Beth Nobles —
Texas Mountain
Trail has been documenting Van Horn's contribution to the regional
culinary culture through a project with the statewide non-profit
organization, Texas Folklife. For the Van Horn area, Texas Folklife was
interested in ranch and cowboy cookery and Van Horn's annual event each
December, the Pecan Dessert Contest. So, we've been conducting audio
interviews and doing photo shoots of both. All the material we produce
will go into a statewide archive, with information from a variety of
cooks and food providers from across Texas. Texas Folklife hopes to
eventually publish a book about heritage foodways and if they do, we
hope the information from Van Horn will be included.
Bob
Kinford published a cookbook in 2009, called The Gourmet Cowboy and
showed us Dutch oven cooking. Bob was also the second place winner in
last year's Pecan Dessert Contest with his Orange Pecan Pie. The recipe
is in his cookbook, which is available through his website,
www.bobkinford.com or through Amazon.com.
We
interviewed Brenda Hinojos, who is in charge of the Pecan Dessert
Contest each year; and last week we visited Joy Scott's culinary classes
with permission of the school. The students were making pecan tarts the
day we arrived, and Ms. Scott will require each student to enter this
year's contest. We were impressed by the work ethic and attention to
detail the students showed as they made the tarts. In teams of two and
three, they measured out the ingredients for the buttery dough, and
pressed them into the tart pans. They combined butter and brown sugar,
vanilla and pecans for the filling and placed the assembled tarts in the
oven.
We've
been impressed by the inventiveness of the cooks entering the Pecan
Dessert Contest and look forward to this December's entries. Some dishes
are adapted from recipes long enjoyed in their families, others are
brand new concoctions. All look delicious!
We
know the contest organizers would love to have even more entries this
year! Visit with Brenda Hinojos in the Convention Center office at City
Hall for details. The date of the contest–as well as the Lighted
Christmas Parade–is December 14! Looking for something to do in the
region? Visit our Texas Mountain Trail events calendar:
www.texasmountaintrail.com/events
