Cowpeople Cuisine

My artsy, photographer friend, Carol, who treated me to a night with Anne Lamott last month, also treated me to today's "Arts and Letters" event at the Dallas Muse de Art. The feature: cookbook and travel writers Paula Disbrowe and Robb Walsh. Disbrowe wrote Cowgirl Cuisine and Walsh (restaurant critic at the Houston Press) wrote The Texas Cowboy Cookbook.

After a cooking demo we ate food prepared by the restaurant staff at Seventeen Seventeen using recipes from the authors' cookbooks followed by a question-and-answer time (which included a lot of storytelling) in the auditorium.

The menu included stuff like dulce de leche flan with pepita brittle and iron-skillet peach cobbler. (Notice dessert comes to mind first.)

But the highlight of the day (besides Carol's company and the fab weather enjoyed during the demo on the courtyard rooftop) was the Habero Carrot soup. I've never been crazy about carrot soup, but then I'd never had Disbrowe's made-it-up-herself recipe. I'm not talking a little toe touch when I say that stuff had some serious kick.

Disbrowe went from Manhattan after 9/11 to a ranch in Rio Frio, Texas (thinking bin Laden might be slightly less likely to strike there). She told of how she found a seven-foot-long snake eating the fresh eggs in the ranch's hen house and how she killed it with her butcher knife and that for some reason her editor decided to nix that story from the narrative in her cookbook. Let's hear it for editors, shall we?