Eva's Kitchen - Eva Longoria Parker [1]
And then there was my Aunt Elsa, who was the biggest influence on my cooking. She passed away a few years ago and I miss her still. She was a professional caterer and her kitchen was always bustling with activity for a party or event she had coming up. She was so inspiring, and a deep well of information. A vault of recipes lay at the tip of her tongue. And she, like my parents, knew how to make ingredients last. Put a chicken in Elsa’s hands on Monday, and you’d eat a bit of it every day for a week; she used the meat, the bones, the wing tips, everything! Because Elsa was a caterer, she had mastered the art of cooking for large groups, as well as cooking the bases of various dishes and freezing them for later use. For example, she made the most delicious biscuits by adding water to a two-gallon bag of base that she kept in the freezer (I share her recipe). She did this with bases for chili, tomato sauce, cookie dough, punch, and tamales. She never measured, a sin I am guilty of as well. In fact, as a dedicated “handful of this, pinch of that” kind of cook, the hardest part of writing this cookbook was learning how to measure!
I believe it is because of Elsa that I love when food is beautifully presented. Since most of what she prepared had to look as good as it tasted, Aunt Elsa had an eye for what food needed to make it visually pop. She could employ simple touches like trimming the crusts off tea sandwiches and more elaborate flourishes like serving fruit salad in a watermelon that she hollowed out so that the bright pink interior shone against the vivid white and green rind. I have her to thank (or to blame) for my obsession with collecting lovely servingware, from tablecloths and napkins to bowls of all sizes, including the adorable jalapeño-shaped bowl I bought in Mexico and in which I always serve pico de gallo so people know it’s spicy!
Aunt Elsa was the source of an endless stream of insights, recipes, and beliefs about cooking I’ve never heard anywhere else. Every day she had a cooking tip for me and she always volunteered it unasked. That’s one thing I loved about her: She would teach you things whether or not you wanted to learn them. She would say, “Evita, never put tomatoes in the fridge,” or “Always put apples in the fridge,” or “Evita, only flip a tortilla once on the comal.” She was also a priceless source of practical information like “Use a dampened paper towel to pick up slivers of broken glass.” I absorbed everything my Aunt Elsa told me like a sponge, and I share her knowledge with you on these pages. Look throughout the book for her tips, labeled “From Aunt Elsa’s Kitchen.”
In this book, I am thrilled to share my passion for cooking along with decades’ worth of family recipes and culinary tips. I’ve delved into the boxes of family and personal recipes I’ve long treasured and offer our family’s tried-and-true recipes and techniques for making the world’s best homemade tortillas, Mexican rice, guacamole, and Pan de Polvo, to mention but a few.
Those are the foods that are at the base of my own culinary journey, and it was only after I left home that I discovered a vast culinary world beyond the rich food history of Texas and Mexico. I also include here recipes I’ve devised and modified over the years that build on my heritage but are further inspired by French, Latin American, Italian, and a range of international styles as well as my political and environmental sensibilities. My cooking style has long been influenced by the full range of fabulous cuisines I’ve sampled and the incredible chefs I’ve had the privilege of knowing over the years.
Once I was launched on this culinary journey I began to play with ingredients in new ways and more consciously practice the abiding principles I was taught on my family’s ranch and in our kitchen—to treat all living beings with dignity and respect and waste nothing the earth has given you. For a year I became a vegetarian, both for my health and to contribute a little less to the stress that meat and poultry