Spirit of the West: Cooking from Ranch House and Range

By Beverly Cox

Book Overview

Get ready to feast on the scrumptious staples and rich delicacies of ranch-style cooking Pot Roast with Dumplings, Quichelma Cattle Company's Rum Ribs, Potato Doughnuts are some of the enticing, simple, and hearty meals that sustained the hard-working and hard-eating cowboys, wranglers, cattle barons and early settlers of the American West. Using available ingredients and basic cookware, these classic and approachable recipes are guaranteed to satisfy the even most hearty appetite.

Peppered throughout the book are the histories behind the recipes--stories of gun-toting grandmothers and fortuitous improvisations over the cook-stove. Notes from Western historian David Dary begin each chapter, providing additional background information and context. Spirit of the West isn't just a record of the foods of the region, but is also a record of the people who created and were sustained by these foods. The native peoples of the region, the Mexican cowboys (vaqueros), and settlers from across the entire United States, all left their mark on this truly American cuisine. The eye-catching photographs capture the vibrancy of the dishes and help bring Spirit of the West to the very top of the list of regional cookbooks.

Another mouth-watering cookbook by Cox and Martin is Spirit of the Earth: Native Cooking from Latin America, full of accessible recipes of the Maya, Inca, and Aztec cultures.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1635617634
• ISBN13: 9781635617634
• Release Date: April 2019
• Publisher: Echo Point Books & Media
• Length: 228 Pages
• Weight: 2.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 8.5" x 11.0"

Customer Reviews

Fantastic Home-Style Ranch Recipes

Spirit of the West is a fantastic cookbook, chock full of great Ranch-Style recipes and home-style food. It is the IACP Cookbook Award Winner, and once I opened it, I could tell why! Its filled with some great recipes, tantalizing photos and accompanying stories. My particular favorites are Quichelna Cattle Company's Rum ribs,Abuelita's Chicken Soup,Flour Tortillas, Way Station Pot Roast with Dumplings. I'm looking forward to trying the biscuit on a stick and Mrs. Swan's White Cake! YUM.Fans of cookbooks and western cuisine are sure to appreciate this cookbook. The photos are huge, tasteful, and numerous, and the recipes offer a delightful mix of western and Mexican inspired food. Just reading this cookbook makes me hungry. =-)

Warm up your Kitchen!

Give your kitchen a shot of true blue ranch cooking with this wonderful book. This extraordinary informative and practical book will win new friends among cooks everywhere, whether experienced or new to the kitchen. Spirit of the West cooking is to be valued chiefly for its "heirloom" dishes. Treasured heirlooms that come down to us from a day when hard physical labor and a need for thrift made chuck-wagon cooks provide satisfying, hearty, filling meals. Rich simmered soups; old fashioned pot roast with dumplings, hot puddings and wonderful baking recipes will take you on a nostalgic trip to the days when homemade breads were a part of everyday life. The Spirit of the West cookbook has the best of the old recipes, easy to prepare with step-by-step instructions attuned to yesteryear's simpler, more informal approach to mealtime. Once you have tried just a few of the recipes, you will understand why generation after generation of good cooks has shared with confidence and assurance their best cooking. Use the full-color photographs for inspiration; then turn your kitchen into the most welcome place in your neck of the woods.