April 2007: Paula Disbrowe’s Cowgirl Cuisine

Paula Disbrowe, a Minnesota (her family still lives here) and Iowa gal, leaves the Midwest to pursue a dream in New York City. Along the way she becomes a famous gastro-teur, penning food and travel pieces for The New York Times and Food & Wine Mag, editing a restaurant trade pub, and hobnobbing with the New York food trendsetters. She falls in love with one of the bakers at Bouley Bakery, and they take NYC by storm, right? Wrong!

They ditch it all and take up residence in the Texas hill country, where they ranch, ride, cook, write, and rediscover why great food is wherever you find yourself.

Her book, Cowgirl Cuisine: Rustic Recipes and Cowgirl Adventures from a Texas Ranch, is really a hundred great recipes bound around profiles of characters she and her husband meet along the way, essays on ropin' and ridin' and birthin' calves (they build up a great appetite!), and wonderful odes and paeans to the best items in the Texas pantry. The recipes are superb, Disbrowe is a great cook and a great writer and her next projects include Susan Spicer and Donald Link's new book projects, but this is 100 percent all her own—a remarkable collection of pictures, remembrances, and recipes. Check it out.

Buy Cowgirl Cuisine at Borders.