Brandied Beef

I was trying to impress a lovely lass when I developed this potential bonfire. As the meat was cooking and my lady friend was cooking a side dish, I received a call from my boss. In the middle of discussing the condition of the cattle, my eye caught black smoke billowing from the grill. Without missing a beat in the conversation, I started jumping up and down, pointing out the window, at which my lovely companion merely gave me a sexy smile and waved back with the knife she was using.

Upon completing my conversation I promptly ran out the door to salvage the meat. Skewering the meat with a large fork, I brought the remains into the house. “This is what I was jumping and pointing at”, I said to my friend, as her jaw dropped at the sight of the still flaming cremation. From the one bite of salvageable meat I could tell this was a good recipe (as long as you could keep from burning the place down!)
3 to 4 lb chuck roast
4 c Brandy
2 c brown sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp ground allspice
Place roast into a shallow pan and sprinkle with sugar and spices. Pour Brandy over the top, cover and refrigerate for 4 hours. Turn roast over and refrigerate an additional 4 hours. Cook over coals or low heat on grill to your preference.
Serves 4 to 6.
(CAUTION: THIS RECIPE IS FLAMMABLE, WATCH CLOSELY)

This recipe is an excerpt from My cookbook The Gourmet Cowboy available at Amazon!

Yellowstone Clam Chowder

When the aspen leaves turn gold in the fall, it is the signal to move the cattle down out of the mountains before the first snow flies. The work is hard, but enjoyable, especially when you get down to the few animals who refuse to be found. A friend of mine once made the analogy that “its just like hunting elk, only you have to bring them in alive.” Since the crews used to gather often number ten or more you need enough to feed a lot of people, and this recipe fits the bill for
gathering crews or holiday parties.
7 - 16 oz cans white potatoes
5 lb diced ham
2 large onions
1 gallon milk
1/4 lb butter
5 - 12 oz cans evaporated milk
11/2 lb muenster cheese
1 bunch celery
2 cloves garlic
1 Tbl black pepper
4 bay leaves
Chop onion and sliver garlic into small pieces. Sauté onion and garlic in butter until clear. Chop celery while onion and garlic are sautéing.
When onion and garlic are clear, add remaining ingredients, reserving cheese. Cook over medium heat for 35 minutes, stirring every five minutes, making sure soup does not boil. While soup is cooking grate cheese. After soup has been cooking thirty minutes, stir in the cheese and continue cooking until cheese has melted.
Makes approximately two gallons.

This recipe is an excerpt from my cookbook The Gourmet Cowboy, available on Amazon

Poor Man's Stew

As broke as the last year left everyone, and as cold as it is in much of the country, Poor Man's stew is an economical way to warm you up from the inside out! Not only will you start out the new year a bit warmer, the flavor will make you smile as well
Half gallon water
1lb hamburger
1c chopped green chili
4 potatoes
1 medium onion
4 cloves garlic
1T salt
Peel and chop onion and garlic, then place in a one gallon pot with hamburger on medium heat, until hamburger is browned. While hamburger is browning, peel potatoes and chop into half inch pieces. When hamburger is browned, add remaining ngredients. Turn heat to high until mixture begins to boil. Reduce to a simmer for 20 minutes.
Serves 4.

Spinach Souffle

Here is another recipe from The Gourmet Cowboy. Happy eating!
1 c finely chopped spinach
4 oz cream cheese
½ c cream
3 eggs
2 Tbl butter
1 clove garlic
½ tsp salt
Preheat oven to 375. Place butter into an eight inch cake pan and place in oven to melt butter. Place spinach in a large mixing bowl. Place eggs, garlic and salt in a mixing bowl and mix on high for one minute. Slice cream cheese into small pieces, add to the egg mixture and mix on high for two minutes. Combine egg mixture with
spinach, stirring slowly by hand until all ingredients are well blended. Remove butter from oven and swirl cake pan to evenly distribute butter, then pour batter into the pan and bake 25 to 30 minutes or until golden brown.
Serves 4

Santa Fe Kiev

You don’t live in New Mexico for long without becoming addicted to chili. Sometimes it seems as though nothing tastes right unless it has chili in it. Therefore, while working on a ranch near Santa Fe, the chili "accidentally" wound up in the Kiev. This simple but elegant recipe is perfect for that intimate holiday meal!
4 Tbl butter
1 Tbl minced onion
1 clove minced garlic
1 Tbl diced green chili
4 boneless chicken breasts
2 oz cream cheese
Melt butter over low heat, then sauté onion, garlic and green chili until clear and remove from heat. Using a meat mallet, pound bone side of breasts until they are flat. After flattening breast, spoon equal amounts of sautéed ingredients, reserving 2 Tbl of butter mixture. Place 1/2 tsp cream cheese on each breast, roll and secure with toothpicks, and place into a pie pan. Pour remaining butter mixture over the breasts, cover and refrigerate eight to twenty-four hours. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.
Serves 2
This recipe is in my cookbook, The Gourmet Cowboy available at Amazon. Just click on the link below!

Brandy, The Christmas Dog

THERE ARE cow dogs, and then there are cow dogs,and Brandy was one of the latter. She could work eitherend of a cow, nipping the heels of a slow-moving steer or
grabbing the ear of a wild runaway. She had helped me gather four hundred steers out of a five-section pasture in one day and pen cattle into corrals with gates only on
the outside corners. If I needed to count cattle through a gate, all I had to do was start the herd, then simply sit back and count as she pushed the rest through on her
own.

When I moved into town to train horses, she would follow me everywhere I went. If I left her home when I went out in a friend’s vehicle, she would be waiting in the
back of my truck when I returned. On the rare occasions when I took my truck somewhere and left her home, she would always be waiting for me faithfully at the door when I returned.

Then, two days before Thanksgiving, a couple of friends stopped by to take me out to dinner. During dinner a fierce wind roared in out of the north, destroying
everything which wasn’t nailed down. I returned home to find a small metal shed torn apart and pieces of the barn roof missing, as was Brandy. The wind was blowing too
hard to call her, so I looked in the barn and around the farm. For the first time in the six years I’d had her, she was gone.

Over the next two weeks I searched daily. My dogs come to my whistle better than to their names, so I whistled as I rode searching for her along the river and
down unfamiliar side roads. Every time I saw a Blue Heeler from a distance, I would have to get a closer look. After two weeks, I had to concede to myself that my faithful companion of the last six years was gone. I could only speculate on what had happened. The wind and blowing
tin must have terrified her so badly that she ran away, but then what? I knew she had not been killed by a car because I would have found her body, unless she had
managed to crawl into the brush to die. She had not been taken to any of the local veterinarians or to any animal shelter. I would never know the final resting place of my faithful companion.

The night before Christmas Eve, I went to a party with my friend Rachel, and when we returned, there was a message on her answering machine for me. It was my
landlady, who lived next door to me. I was thrilled to hear, “Bob there are a bunch of dogs on the porch, and I think one of them is Brandy!”

I jumped in my truck and drove straight home. There I was greeted by none other than Brandy herself, squirming on her side, thumping her tail, and literally
grinning from ear to ear. It was as if the other dogs had brought her home for Christmas, for, like Santa, they were nowhere around.

I wish dogs could talk so that she could have let me know what had happened to her. She couldn’t use one back leg and was a virtual skeleton from having to fend for herself while being hurt.
The next day at work, she was in her usual place,seated in the middle of the arena watching me ride. I guess miracles do happen around Christmas time, don’t
they?