Hi-Yo Cookbook --  Souffle!!

Cowboys in the Kitchen, by John Hart. 80 pages.  $24.95, postage included.  Available from Mick LaFever, 59 Maple Street, Avon, NY 14414.

reviewed by Chris Braithwaite

At the outset, the reader deserves to be told why someone who doesn’t cook in northeastern Vermont would review a book about cowboy cuisine that has been self-published by a man who lives in southwestern California.

John Hart is my brother-in-law, married to my big sister, Beryl.

But that doesn’t really explain it. I have had a deep affection for and fascination with John Hart ever since he joined the clan late in the 1950s. He was starring as Hawkeye in the television series “Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans,” an American show that was shot in and around Toronto, Canada.  Beryl, fresh back from England and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, had a bit part in an episode of the series.  They have been together ever since.

John was born and raised in southern California, and spent two high school summers herding cattle on ranches in that surprisingly rural state.  (It must have been particularly rural when John was at South Pasadena High School, sometime between 1931 and 1935.  He will be 83 in December.)

By 1937 John had gone to work in Hollywood, where they pay people to fall off horses.  One way and another, as stunt man, actor, post-production technician, sound man, director, producer, writer and I’ve forgotten what else, he earned his living in the television and motion picture industry for more than half a century.

He has his star on Hollywood Boulevard, and a fine collection of black and white studio stills of himself as the Lone Ranger (he filled in for 52 television episodes), Hawkeye, the Phantom, and Jack Armstrong, All-American Boy. 

And now John has a cookbook. 

I must quickly confess that I have tried none of his recipes, since I don’t cook. 

But I recognize some of them, and know them to be very tasty, indeed.  Among them are one of Beryl’s best dishes, imperial chicken, and a couple from the Braithwaite family archives:  Scott Young’s spaghetti sauce and grandpa’s mustard.

Of the latter, he complains mildly, “This recipe has been passed down through several generations of my wife’s family and I can’t get anyone to give me exact proportions.”  I’ve had the same problem.

Although it includes recipes for cowboy coffee, beef jerky and son-of-a-bitch stew, John’s choices cover a great deal of other territory. 

Noting that the earliest cowboys spoke Spanish, he opens with a fascinating discussion of Mexican cooking, and offers recipes for making tortillas from scratch, chili rellenos and menudo (hominy soup).

Nor are the recipes strictly of the he-man variety.  John has a good deal to say about the virtues of alfalfa sprouts, French onion soup, and his life-long affection for artichokes.

But the real flavor of this book lies less in the recipes than the yarns the author uses to string them together.

His recipe for a rib dish called miner’s bones is preceded by a very funny story about a starving prospector who eats his dog.  It concludes:

“A little later as Pete finished gnawing the last succulent bite and dropped the bone on the pile at his feet, he paused a moment.  The food had restored him; he looked down at the pile of bones and said loudly: ‘Dadgumit, Rover would a loved them bones.’”

That might serve as fair warning that anyone who dips into this book is in for the occasional surprise.

John begins with a careful disclaimer: “I certainly don’t claim to be a gourmet cook, and regard myself as an over-enthusiastic amateur.  I started fooling around in the kitchen and driving my wife nuts rather late in life.  I’ve had so much fun doing it and so much fun talking about it with others who enjoy cooking that I’ve been encouraged to share my pleasure and enthusiasm.”

Pleasure and enthusiasm are two things John Hart shares very well, and with great generosity. 

He is the quintessential California guy and his book carries the flavor, not only of a great many dishes that look tasty, easy and fun to try, but also of that distant sun-drenched state and the people who love it enough to live there.