"Monument chocolate pie is dense and fudgy. Look closely at the crust. It is not a crust, but a web of crunchy toasted pecans. Brilliant!"
Michael Stern
"Texas on a plate: chicken fried steak with gravy, mashed potatoes, green chile squash casserole, and a refreshing apple salad."
Michael Stern
"Honest chili: rich and bright, tasting of cumin and hot but not aggressively so. Wen you order it, the waitress will ask, "onions and cheese?" But of course!"
Michael Stern
"King Ranch casserole is found in countless self-published cookbooks but is rare in restaurants. It's made with creamed soup, corn tortillas, cheese and chicken. How a chicken casserole got named for a cattle ranch is a mystery to Texas food historians."
Michael Stern
"Dense, rich, sweet, crowned with fresh whipped cream and perched atop a fragile crust, this coconut cream pie sets the benchmark."
Michael Stern
"Migas is a way of adding the crunch and chew of tortilla chips to scrambled eggs (along with cheese, tomatoes, and hot sauce)."
Michael Stern
"See all the big chunks of pecan in this sour cream coffee cake? Pecan trees are everywhere in this part of Texas."
Michael Stern
"Old-fashioned chocolate cake: super chocolaty but not cloying the way 'decadent' flourless cakes can be."
Michael Stern
"The old location up the road was an airy space with plenty of elbow room at tables and the counter: a nice place to linger over morning coffee. Those blurs in the foreground are good ice tea and fresh-squeezed lemonade."
Michael Stern
"Jane and I have long contended that ice in the South and Southwest is colder than ice in the north. This close-up view of a glass of ice tea illustrates our point."
Michael Stern
"Is this the best chocolate pie in Texas?"
Michael Stern
