You Go, Cowgirl!
Julie Mautner
Posted: February 20, 2009
PARIS—American journalist Ellise Pierce was miserable in Paris. A Dallas, Texas native, she had moved to the City of Light to join her French boyfriend, Xavier, but found herself missing just about everything, particularly "big skies, blazing sunshine, Target, and Tex-Mex." To ease her homesickness, she started cooking in her tiny 16th arrondissement apartment, inviting the few people she knew in town to come for chili and Margaritas. Traveling to the States for work or family events, Pierce schlepped fleur de sel de Guérande and Patrick Roger chocolates from France, filling her bags with canned japaleños, chipotles, Crisco, Whole Foods' peanut butter and bubble-wrapped jars of salsa verde on her return.
"I carefully weigh every jar and can, to stay within the 50 pound per bag limit," she says, "but I always end up paying extra at check-in. When every jar of Arriba salsa weighs two pounds, it doesn't take much to tip the scales." When friends came to Paris, one brought chili powder and Mexican oregano; another, a tortilla press.
Pierce found that cooking comfort food made her loneliness more tenable. So she started poking around local shops and markets for ingredients more readily at hand. She found that Moroccan peppers and Thai chiles could mimic the flavor and fire of jalapeños; she saw that dried black beans and pintos were easy to find. So were limes and cilantro, sold in bunches for 1 or less. She started making her own salsa, pico de gallo, ranchero sauce, and guacamole, then moved on to cheese enchiladas with ancho chile sauce and black bean cakes with Margarita shrimp.
When she couldn't find what she wanted, she improvised—turns out you can make great fajitas, tortillas, and quesadillas in a crêpe pan—and often found that the new version beat the old. (She proclaims her refried beans made with duck fat are "the best in the world.")
"France is a country with 400-plus cheeses," she reports, "but there's not a Pepper Jack to be found." (A blend of buffalo mozzarella, chiles, and English cheddar does the trick.) And she found other goodies in surprising places, like Corona beer at the little grocery down the street.
Word spread faster than a brush fire in West Texas, and soon Pierce was being asked to do small catering jobs. Et voilà—Cowgirl Tacos was born. Today she brings home-style Tex-Mex dishes to homes and offices all over town—for lunch, dinner and after-work cocktails. And it's not just homesick Yankees, she says, who are gobbling up her tortilla soups and slow-cooked beef brisket tacos: Parisians can't seem to get enough of the stuff (although they prefer to eat their fajita-stuffed tortillas with a knife and fork). Also on her catering menus are dishes Pierce fell for while traveling, such as a Belizean cilantro/lime bisque and empanadas inspired by a Cuban takeaway in Miami. She started a Web site to promote her catering and a blog to show how it's done.
Once she sorted out the differences between French and American flour (the French is much fluffier), Pierce started baking classic American desserts such as coconut cream pie, sour cream apple pie, dark chocolate brownies, and "sheath cake." Her clients loved them, so onto the menu they went.
Late this summer, she launched Tex-Mex cooking classes and they too have become wildly popular; Pierce teaches in clients' homes or her own. In November, she started a "short and sassy" Tex-Mex Thank-God-It's-Monday Cook & Eat Series. "You grab three or four friends," she explains, "and come over to mi casa for lunch. I demonstrate and regale you with stories of Texas and Tequila; you make your very own Tex-Mex lunch, all for the crazy price of just 45 (roughly $57)."
Pierce's future plans include cooking one night a week in a local restaurant, her own taqueria, and, of course, a book. But for the time being she's blissfully busy, and things in Paris are sunnier indeed. "With Willie Nelson and Lyle Lovett on the iPod, I can transport myself to Texas in an instant by making food that tastes like home," she says. "And I've come to realize that Texans and the French aren't so different after all. They both talk funny and both love to eat great food."
For info: www.cowgirltacos.com.
