Eva Longoria - Evas Kitchen: Cooking with Love for Family and Friends

Copyright 2011 by Eva Longoria Parker
Food photography 2011 by Ben Fink
Portrait photography 2011 by Randall Slavin
Photographs on copyright 2011 by Maile Wilson

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.clarksonpotter.com

CLARKSON POTTER is a trademark and POTTER with colophon is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress
Longoria, Eva.
Evas kitchen : cooking with love for family and
friends / Eva Longoria.1st ed.
Includes index.
1. Cooking. 2. Entertaining. 3. Cookbooks.
I. Title.
TX714.P3745 2011
641.5dc22 2010035479

eISBN: 978-0-307-95225-7

Design by Jennifer K. Beal Davis

v3.1

THIS BOOK IS
DEDICATED TO MY
Aunt Elsa

My love affair with cooking started long ago, but I remember it so clearly. When I was about six years old, my mom was leaving for work early one morning and I told her I was hungry. So cook something! she answered. I vividly remember pulling up a chair to the stove and turning it on with a match. (I knowdangerous, but it was a different time!) I selected the smallest frying pan I could find because I wanted to cook one egg. Not eggs, just one egg. I cracked the egg on the edge of the pan, as Id seen my mom do effortlessly many times before, and emptied it into the frying pan.

Of course, the pan was full of eggshell. I didnt use any butter or oil, so the egg stuck everywhere. I cant even remember now what it tasted like, but I can recall the feeling of accomplishment I had after cooking that egg. I found it empowering and energizing. I was hooked from that day forward.

I wanted to learn everything! I wanted my little EASY-BAKE Oven to make casseroles like my moms. I wanted my lemonade stand to have more flavor options than just lemon. And for Christmas I wanted my own hand mixer! I eventually graduated from cooking an egg to making my own spaghetti sauce.

I have my family to thank for my cooking skills and the inspiration they gave me to begin my own culinary journey. My dad was a big believer in never eating fast food, so we were not allowed to have it. And nothing ever went to waste. I grew up on a ranch outside of Corpus Christi, Texas, and throughout my childhood my family grew our own vegetables and raised our own chickens. Every day my mom cooked with garden-fresh calabasa (squash), carrots, and beans, and freshly laid eggs. Every last bit of that gardens harvest was always used, and any trimmings went right to the compost pile. She worked full-time as a special education teacher; took care of my oldest sister, who is developmentally disabled; and had three other daughters to drive all over town to cheerleading, band practice, work, and everywhere else busy teenage girls need to go. But in spite of it all, she always managed to have dinner on the table every night at 6 P.M. for my dad. This was such an important lesson in my life. The fact that my mother clearly reveled in taking care of her family in addition to having a career inspired me to be the same way. I cannot count the number of times that Ive found myself in a Gucci dress and heelswith full hair and makeup, about to run out to an eventpulling a roasted chicken out of the oven in order to make sure that my family is fed before leaving the house to face a hundred photographers on a red carpet.

I remember cooking a Cuban dish all day (because it takes eight hours) and then running off to a red carpet event where an interviewer actually said to me, You smell good, like food!

Oh, thats comino, I answered, using the Spanish word for cumin. I was cooking Ropa Vieja all day.

It made me laugh, but at the same time it reminded me that my family comes first, and my acting second.

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 Elsas hands on Monday, and youd 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 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 jalapeo-shaped bowl I bought in Mexico and in which I always serve pico de gallo so people know its spicy!

Aunt Elsa was the source of an endless stream of insights, recipes, and beliefs about cooking Ive never heard anywhere else. Every day she had a cooking tip for me and she always volunteered it unasked. Thats 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 Elsas Kitchen.

In this book, I am thrilled to share my passion for cooking along with decades worth of family recipes and culinary tips. Ive delved into the boxes of family and personal recipes Ive long treasured and offer our familys tried-and-true recipes and techniques for making the worlds 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 Ive 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 Ive sampled and the incredible chefs Ive had the privilege of knowing over the years.