Robb Walsh

When you're craving those childhood favorite Tex-Mex flavors, nothing but seasoned ground beef in a hard shell will do.

Serve this meatless main—made by frying torn-up tortillas or tortilla chips with eggs, tomatoes, and cheese—for breakfast or whenever you need an authentic Tex-Mex experience.

Stuffed peppers come out well on the grill if you don't make them too big. I like to mix ground meats and season the stuffed peppers heavily. Be sure to cook a little of the meat mixture to test the seasonings before you stuff the peppers, since the salt and spice levels of the various sausage meats and seasoning mixes vary widely.

At Matt's Rancho Martinez in Dallas, they have an appetizer called fried avocados. The deep-fried wedges are served with romaine lettuce "taco shells," cilantro, slivers of carrots and jicama, and other fixin's. "I got the idea from Vietnamese restaurants," said Marco Martinez, son of the late Matt Martinez Jr. "The lettuce rolls are great for people on the Atkins diet, too; they put their fajitas on them. We use soy sauce on the fajitas—we borrow lots of things from Asian cooking." Making Viet-Mex salad rolls is sort of like making lettuce tacos. Put all the ingredients out on the table and let everybody "roll their own."

A restaurant in McAllen, Texas, called Republic of the Rio Grande Grill and Cantina invented this entrée-size grilled tuna salad with grapefruit sections and red onions on top. It's a classic combination of South Texas flavors—and a very healthy dinner.

As tamales spread across Texas and the rest of the South, they underwent some changes. Easy-to-find cornmeal replaced the Mexican lime-slaked masa and paper squares were often used to roll up the tamales instead of the traditional corn shucks. Anglo tamale-eaters preferred beef to the traditional pork, so beef tamales became common.

Biscochitos are the best thing to get with your coffee when you eat breakfast at a Mexican bakery. Mi Tierra makes my favorite version of these rich Mexican cookies. Sorry, there is no substitute for the lard—it's the secret ingredient!

Lots of Tex-Mex restaurants use bottled mole pastes from Mexico such as Doña Maria brand. Tricks of the trade include reconstituting the paste with chicken broth instead of water and boosting the flavor with peanut butter. Here's a simple homemade mole that tastes even better than the bottled paste.

If you like regular pecan pie made with corn syrup, wait until you taste old-fashioned pecan pie made with cane syrup—the difference is astonishing!

When you combine powdered chiles with cumin and other ingredients to make a spice mix for chili con carne, you are turning chile powder into chili powder.

Texas cowboys and cowgirls dip their egg sandwiches in this stuff for breakfast, they dunk their fried onion rings in it at lunch, and they cover their broccoli with it at dinner. It's the ultimate dipping sauce for cold pizza, the perfect accompaniment to crudités, and—oh, yeah—it's also a salad dressing. Once you learn how to make your own ranch dressing, you'll save yourself a fortune on the stuff. And it's really easy. You can even use yogurt instead of sour cream to make a low-fat version. Add some minced herbs from your garden if you like. Chives are another great addition.

At Leon's "World's Finest" In & Out B-B-Q House on Galveston Island, they serve tender ribs and tangy sauce with sensational Southern-style vegetables. "It's all in the seasoning," says Leon. Here's his recipe for turnip greens.

Borrachomeans drunk, and it refers to the beer in the cooking liquid. If you're cooking beans and pork roast at the same time, you can use the fatty pieces of pork that you remove while carving to add flavor to the beans. Otherwise, use some bacon.

Those with Texas-size appetites will require an entire steak; for most others — even the heartiest of meat lovers — half of one of these rib steaks is probably plenty.