Spirit of the West: Cooking from Ranch House and Range

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.)