It begins with an essay by the newsman himself, who describes falling head-over-heels for the people and landscapes of Montana, and his decision to buy a ranch near Livingston.
His wife, at first, did not share the dream. If you buy the ranch, Meredith Brokaw warned him in New York, “you'll have to take care of it. I have enough to handle in this end of the country.”
“By the end of that first day,” Meredith writes in her essay, “Homecoming,” “I knew, sitcom moments notwithstanding, that owning the ranch would turn into a love story, and it has.”
“Big Sky Cooking” is a 224-page hard-cover celebration of Montana's best gifts: friendships, ranch life, breath-taking vistas, wildlife, flowers, scents, tastes - “a world of its own and a way of life,” Meredith writes.
Like her husband, Meredith is a native of South Dakota, “so my arrival (in Montana) had a resonance for me,” she says. “I had a very real physical sense of homecoming.”
She respects the “cadences of Montana life.”
“Hospitality takes on a new meaning when someone drives 40 miles to have dinner at your house, never mind just to stop by and say hello,” she said.
The ranch has become a gathering place for family - the Brokaws' three daughters and their families, Meredith's brothers and sisters and their families, and Tom's mother and two brothers.
Another visitor - and now, Montana-lover, too - is Meredith's co-author, Ellen Wright, a 30-year friend of the Brokaws whose passion for food included training with Julia Child and Cordon Bleu's Claude Bailes, pastry lessons with Maurice Bonte, and testing recipes for James Beard.
In her essay, Wright says she admires the state's minimal way of talking and doing, its slower ways, its “nuts-and-bolts way of dealing with life.”
Meredith Brokaw is already an author of note, especially in the world of parents who craved good ideas for kids. Her series of eight Penny Whistle books on parenting and children's activities are classics; she was president of the Penny Whistle Toy Co. for 20 years.
“Big Sky Cooking” is dedicated to “the spirit of Montana” and includes nearly 100 recipes, organized into 20 menus with western themes, including “Picnic on the Fly,” “Cow Camp Lunch,” “Short Rib Feast,” “Dinner on the Bridge” and “Streamside Supper.”
But the book also is a reader's delight, with essays by well-known writers with connections to the Brokaws and Montana, including neighbor Tom McGuane; world-class fisherman Jim Harrison; William Hjortsberg, a student of food history and Montana cuisine; artist James Prosek; and essayist Verlyn Klinkenborg.
The book is part travelogue and memoir, too, filled with color photographs, mostly the work of two accomplished and award-winning photographers, neighbor and landscape-wildlife photographer Tom Murphy, and food photographer Tom Eckerle. Meredith Brokaw introduces some of the charms of the Livingston area, including the “not-so-secret” Val's Deli in Wilsall and hard-working hungry cowboys, and snapshots of the Brokaws' lives, including Sage and Abbie, the family's bandana-wearing, range-roving Labs.
For the cookbook, Wright and Meredith created new recipes, retooled old family favorites, and reinterpreted classics.
“It's all simple, honest, delicious food, offered with great respect for hardworking people who take life head-on in a wonderful way,” Wright says.
Recipes from "Big Sky Cooking" also in this weeks food section.
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