Kent Rollins - Faith, family & the feast : recipes to feed your crew from the grill, garden, and iron skillet

Cowboy cook KENT ROLLINS captivates fans from Branson, Missouri, to the Big Apple with his full-flavored cooking, Western wit, and wisdom. An acclaimed storyteller and poet, he has appeared on Food Network, NBCs Food Fighters, and CBS Sunday Morning. His wife, photographer SHANNON ROLLINS, cooks with Kent. They are the authors of A Taste of Cowboy, an Amazon Top 100 Book for a Lifetime of Eating and Drinking.

Copyright 2020 by Kent and Shannon Rollins

Photographs 2020 by Shannon Rollins

Photographs on pages Stormie Mosimann

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

hmhbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN: 978-0-358-12449-8 (hbk); 978-0-358-12243-2 (ebk)

Book design by Melissa Lotfy

v1.0220

DEDICATION

We dedicate this book to the little places, the ones you may have traveled through going somewhere else. Small towns across the nation that maybe time has passed by, but life is still there. Where Sunday socials after church offer not only five-star dining but, more importantly, fellowship. Where the coffee is served hot at community cafs and the conversations are always flowing. They may just seem like dots on a map, but we know these places are beacons of hope.

We dedicate this book to those feeding their families not only with food but with values and faith.

Finally, we dedicate this book to veterans and our servicemen and women. We are grateful for the sacrifices made by these individuals and families so that we may enjoy the freedoms we have in a country that we are blessed to live in. We tip our hats to you all.

Have you ever seen a Norman Rockwell painting and wished you could have been transported to that place? Rockwell just seemed to have a knack for capturing the best of American lifeits people and places. And for a minute you get a glimpse into a simpler time.

These scenes arent a lost art, but they are fading. I was raised in such a place, and Id like to invite yall there. Where we live, hard work and values are more than just wordsthey are daily actions. Faith in God and family gets us through the hard times.

The world today is a busy place. So many families rely on fast food and even faster schedules. From emails to text messages, modern technology has nearly taken over. And here I was thinking that the Pony Express was a pretty brilliant inventiona feller on a horse with a letter is just my style of communication! It seems were all so busy that we dont even have time for conversation. Folks hold a phone at the table rather than a fork. Why, if were not careful, were liable to end up with a drive-through window at my chuck wagon!

For those of you meeting my wife, Shannon, and me for the first time, let me introduce you to the lifestyle that we are blessed to lead. Shannon and I cook year-round, whether from our 1876 Studebaker chuck wagon feeding cowboys on working cattle ranches, firing up the grill in the backyard, or gathering with friends and family in the kitchen to celebrate a meal together.

When I first met Shannon while hosting a cooking workshop in her hometown of Elko, Nevada, she claimed to know nothing about cooking. I introduced her to the chuck wagon and taught her about cowboy and cast-iron cooking. Now she can dang near run the whole business with one finger. Shes like American ExpressI dont go anywhere without her. Ive seen her lift Dutch ovens filled with food that nearly weigh as much as she does, split wood, drive a wagon, and cook a gourmet meal over a hot fire, no matter the weather or the time of day. There are no spa days or pedicures out here. She is often the first woman to have ever cooked off a chuck wagon at some of the ranches weve worked. She is also a great photographer, and all the pictures youll find in this book are hers. From scenic views around camps and dusty pens of cattle to hungry cowboys and full plates of food, it takes someone special to capture a glimpse into our world.

The ranches and camps we cook for arent fancy, but neither was our kitchen table when I was young, nor the food on it, but it did bring family and friends together. My mother used to say, Its not the legs around this table that hold it up, but the family gathered at it. As Mama, Dad, my two older brothers, my sister, and I all sat together visiting, laughing, and eating, someone else always seemed to drop by for a visit. Mama was a great cook, and not only that, she could make a feast out of a few simple ingredients. There were no china plates nor fancy fixings, but neither was there such a thing as a Sunday social or Fourth of July celebration without her slow-churned homemade ice cream.

Before nearly every meal, Mama would say, I taught you manners, God gave you grace, and we are going to use both at every meal! I think she mainly meant that as a warning not to spill anything as we ate, but theres still a lot of weight in those words.

Just like at Mamas old kitchen table, Shannon and I try to make everyone feel welcomed wherever were cooking, whether its on a ranch or at home in our kitchen. Its a gathering place where stories are shared, the food is served up family style, and theres always enough for seconds.

Family nights on ranches are particularly special because those are times when the wives and children of the cowboys all come out. On longer ranch works, the fellers can be away from their families for several weeks, so its a chance to reconnect and share a meal together. Before every meal, hats are removed since hands are clasped, and every head is bowed to say grace and offer thanks to the cow boss upstairs.

After the blessing, I yell, Lets eat before I throw it out! They fill their plates, find a spot to sit, and begin to discuss the days hot topics. It might be about some unruly bovine, an ornery old horse, or whats coming up in the garden. All the cares of the modern world are set aside.

As farm and ranch folks, we have made our living from the things God has given us: fertile ground, rain, and sunshine. But most of all He gave us life, and I was taught to make the most out of life. No matter how bad it might seem, there is always something to be thankful for.

We wrote this book as a way to pass on the blessings weve received from living in a small rural cowboy community and to share the food, the stories, and the feeling of a happy heart. We wrote it to bear witness to all the things that I was fortunate to be raised around: garden ingredients, hot-off-the-grill goodness, and comfort foods sizzling in the old iron skillet. But this isnt just a cookbook, its an open invitation to come spend time with us on the porch, visit, and set yourself a place at our table. So, praise the Lordand pass the Jalapeo-Cheddar Buttermilk Biscuits!