Details
Synopsis
Robust dishes in the tradition of hearty Western cooking, including Mesquite Smoked Turkey, Fried Chicken with King Ranch Beans, Pecan Bread with Chokecherry Jelly, Potato Doughnuts, and Cowboy Coffee.
| Size | | Length: | 224 pages | | Height: | 11.5 in | | Width: | 9.3 in | | Thickness: | 0.8 in | | Weight: | 48.8 oz |
Industry Reviews
Cox and Jacobs are the authors of Spirit of the Harvest (LJ 11/15/91), which focused on North American Indian cooking. Now they look at the cowboy culture of the early West, the big ranches, and the homesteaders, with a brief final chapter on today's dude ranches. They start with the vaqueros, the Mexican predecessors of the American cowboy, and then move north. Cowboy Coffee is here, as are Biscuits on a Stick, but most of the homey recipes are more appealing than those few that have been included more for the sake of curiosity or authenticity. Jacobs's striking photographs illustrate the text, Cox's headnotes are readable and informative, and Western historian David Dary provides additional background in the chapter introductions. There have been a few scattered titles in this area, but none on this scale; recommended for regional libraries and other large collections.
Ives
While Cox and Jacobs (Spirit of the Harvest: North American Indian Cooking) do a fine job of gathering recipes for the foods cowboys ate, the cowboy diet will excite few modern palates. What readers will enjoy, however, is the background. The authors cover the various eras that transformed the West, and Cox tells a few tales about her versatile great-grandmother, who, when she wasn't patrolling her land with a shotgun when the U.S. Army tried to claim it, found time to invent Grandma Ketcham's Macaroni Casserole. The first and last chapters on vaqueros, or Mexican cowboys, and modern dude ranches, respectively provide the freshest recipes for such dishes as Eggs Baked in Red Chile Sauce, El Pato Mexican Rice and Eaton's Ranch Oatcakes. The remaining chapters, e.g., "The Homesteading Era," rely heavily on lard and use scant fresh produce, since little beyond cabbage was available to cowboys. This leads to interesting experiments such as Sonoran Beef Jerky, Fried Apricot Pies made with dried apricots, a No-Egg Squaw Cake using kidney fat, Two Old-Fashioned Taffies (requiring the two-person pulling method), Sourdough Hotcakes and Potato Doughnuts. Literary Guild selection; author tour. (Nov.)
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