Over the next few months, I'm going to take you folks on some culinary explorations, deep into what may be for some of you uncharted gustatory territory. Not being an expert myself in many of these exotic cuisines, I'll be enlisting the help of various experts along the way to help illuminate our path.

Since we're here in our little electronic home, I'll make sure that our explorations have an Internet flavor, and give you plenty of Web sites to explore for further learning and fun.

We're going to begin this week with a topic near and dear to my heart and taste buds: Tex-Mex cuisine. For those of you who've spent too much time hanging around Taco Bell, this may be something of an awakening. For many of you, it may be a completely new land.

It was with no small degree of surprise that, once I began trying to find a Tex-Mex expert, I found one of the leading online retailers of Tex-Mex food and supplies is, in fact, a French-Canadian firebrand named Annie DuBois. Through her site, www.texmextogo.com, she dispenses the finest in salsas, relishes and cooking accessories along with tidbits of wisdom and nifty recipes.

While she's far too modest to use it in public, Annie has been officially given the title "The Salsa Queen" by sailors aboard a ship in the Persian Gulf. During the Gulf War, she routinely received orders for her tortilla chips to be shipped to a military address. After a few orders, Annie included a case of salsa to accompany the chips and, soon after, she received a photo diary of the salsa party the sailors held on deck along with a proclamation granting her the title.

The current governor of Texas, Rick Perry, is a fan of her rice mix, and she and her partner, Henry Riojas, are even talking with NASA about spicing up life aboard the International Space Station.

One of the basic elements in Tex-Mex creations is spice, the sensation of which is conveyed by a chemical called capsaicin. The more "heat" a pepper has, the more capsaicin it contains. Most of the capsaicin is contained in the white "ribs" of whatever pepper you're using. You can just about neutralize the heat of a pepper by scraping out those ribs and the seeds thoroughly.

But why would you want to do that?

Here's a fun food fact for you: the United States consumes more salsa per year than ketchup. It's true! If you've ever had a good medium tomato-based salsa over scrambled eggs in the morning, you know why.

But not all salsa is composed of red tomatoes and other fixings. One of my personal favorites is "green" salsa, salsa verde, which is based on the tomatillo, a relative of the gooseberry. It's my favorite for chip dipping while watching TV on a lazy Sunday, especially with a side dish of Annie's spicy trail mix.

Just as not all salsa is green, not all Tex-Mex is salsa. Never had a freshly made corn or flour tortilla? With Annie's help, you'll be cranking out your own in no time. This is a big help to those of you in northern climes, where reasonably fresh tortillas may not be sold at local grocery stores.

When you think of Tex-Mex, or Mexican food in general, I'll bet vanilla is not one of the flavors that immediately pops to mind. However, Mexico is one of the world's leading producers of vanilla, and it's very high-quality stuff. One whiff and you'll never buy imitation again. Naturally, TexMexToGo can provide you with quart bottles of the good stuff.

For dessert, there are praline pecans (which I've tasted, and can highly recommend) and pecan honey butter (a delicacy yet to be sampled). For a truly amazing taste, try some jalapeno jam over your favorite English muffin or other baked goods. It also makes a stellar glaze on steaks hot off the grill.

Perhaps pickles and relishes are more to your liking. If you'd like to bridge between European and Tex-Mex foods by trying new flavors in familiar textures, Annie can fit the bill there, too. She's got a spicy/sweet bread-and-butter cut pickle called Fickles that, well, calling them addictive is just too mild a term. I defy anyone to return a jar to the refrigerator with less than 10 pickles missing. If you really want to give your guests something to chatter about, try serving up some Texas Caviar, a blackeyed pea-based relish that's best served cold. Toast points are optional. I prefer a good stout tortilla chip, myself.

You don't need to be shopping at all to spend a few enjoyable hours at TexMexToGo, though. Want to dry your own chiles? Puzzled by some of the Tex-Mex lingo and terminology? Looking for recipes? You've found a home.

To get you started on your Tex-Mex journey, try Annie's recipe for Bowtie Shrimp:

Ingredients

2 lbs. medium shrimp, peeled and deveined

½ stick butter

1 16-ounce jar mild tomato-based salsa

1½ tbsp. lemon-pepper seasoning blend

2 cloves garlic, crushed

16 ounces bowtie pasta

Preparation

Cook pasta as indicated, drain, rinse with cold water.

Melt ½ stick butter in 9-inch skillet, add crushed garlic and cook until garlic begins to brown. Add shrimp and cook 5 minutes.

>Remove shrimp from skillet with serrated spoon and set aside.

In large sauce pan, pour salsa, add lemon-pepper seasoning and cook on medium heat for 5 minutes. Add shrimp, and simmer on low for 10 minutes.

Place bow tie pasta in large serving dish, pour shrimp sauce over it and serve.

Drive-Through Review

Just as I spent a fair amount of time in Philly, giving me an angle for last week's bad review of Jack In The Box's execrable parody of a cheesesteak, my time in the trenches at Hooter's has given me an intimate understanding of the care and feeding of a proper Buffalo wing. Understandably, I greeted KFC's new "Hot Wings" product with more than a touch of skepticism.

This couldn't possibly work. First off, the wings are breaded. Now, I actually prefer mine that way in some cases, but "true" Buffalo wings are served unbreaded ("naked" in wingspeak). Second, they are served without benefit of wing sauce of any kind.

In their favor, they were a lot cheaper than Hooter's or Wing Stop's products, at $2.99 for an eight-pack.

Taste buds prepared for disappointment, I placed my order and dug in. I was quite pleasantly surprised! The mouth feel of the breading hit me first off. It was more of a standard flour breading, not the slightly chewy mix that KFC normally uses. While it was a bit greasy, it was no more so than what one would expect from a fried wing.

The spice was the truly enjoyable part. Falling about a half-step short of Tabasco in heat, it built nicely and by the fourth wing I had a pleasant pepper tingle built up. This was without benefit of a sauce of any kind, solely through spices in the breading.

Don't get my wrong. I'm not about to throw over my favorite wing joints for KFC, but the Hot Wings are a pleasant add-on to a meal and should more than suffice as the late-night snacking material so important to we sleep-challenged food writers.

Got a question? Comment? Topic you'd like to see covered? Pledge of undying love? Drop me a line anytime!