Austin Food Blogger Alliance Cookbook.

Mando Rayo's fried egg tacos. © Ryan Schierling

We love cookbooks, and believe that if you truly want a comprehensive understanding of a family or community, read one of their collected cookbooks cover to cover. Find the most dog-eared, sauce-splattered pages, cook those recipes and you will know the way to their hearts. 

Last September, we were asked to test a pair of recipes for the Austin Food Blogger Alliance cookbook, set to be published in the Spring of 2013 by History Press.

Mando Rayo of Taco Journalism has one of the most exhaustively-compiled review sites of taco trucks and taquerias in and around Austin, and we've used that vast database for years now in finding new tacos. His fried egg taco recipe produced a deliciously spicy, messy handful best served "after many tequilazos." 

Michelle Nezamabadi of Beyond Picket Fences provided an incredibly rich Persian lamb stew recipe called abgusht that was foreign enough to me that I had to ask numerous questions of an older Iranian co-worker who was well-versed in the dish. "You must make sure to cut the lamb shank bone in half and get all the marrow out into the dish…" Done, and done. It was comfort food like none we'd ever had and made a beautiful plate (though I was told later by my co-worker that it everything needed to be smashed together more, to almost a mashed potato consistency).

Michelle Nezamabadi's abgusht. © Ryan Schierling

We were also able to submit a pair of recipes that we make regularly – Papaquiles, and Damir's Broccoli –  and hopefully, in turn, someone gained a little better understanding of us in preparing them. 

The cookbook is now being pre-sold through the end of February on the AFBA site, and we can't wait to see it.