Frying Pan West; 102

Open See, the golden bear? Well, we went to the东西 to stand right up toward the lass The panel is truly a charity style. Steps in the American dollar, each one we surely get. War to carry a gun, and then get free to build a charity sale. Welcome back to frying pan's West. Tonight's show we're going to have some information about buffalo and some of the foods of the early West. In a current magazine, you've seen quite a bit of material about buffalo raising the ranchers that are now raising some 60,000 buffalo in both private and public herds. And I thought I'd wear my buffalo hat tonight,

but it's hefty, so I think I'll detach. On the subject of buffalo, the whole country was originally covered with great herds of the animals. From Maine all the way south to Georgia and west to the West coast, hundreds of thousands of the American bison, or as we call them, buffalo, roamed in all parts of the country. The early colonists, even in Virginia and in Massachusetts, described killing the buffalo and eating them, using the hides and, indeed, making coats and clothing out of them. However, by around the 1830s, the buffalo had disappeared from the area east of the Appalachians. And by around 1840, there were no buffalo left east of the Mississippi. However, all of the western prairies were just covered with hundreds of thousands of the animals roaming in great bands.

The stories of them turning over railroad trains in the 70s and 80s were actually true. The tremendous mass of the animals, when they were in a stampede type of situation where they were just going hellbent for leather across the prairie, they would smash into railroads and actually knock over the engines. Well, back in the days of the fur trade in the 1820s and 30s and early 40s in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, the buffalo was a main staple dish. And for the westward migration, the people would shoot the buffalo as their mainstay of food when they were traveling by wagon train west. The mountain men of the time, like the buffalo hump, is the best part to eat. The reason for that was that it was fatty

and they needed a lot of fat in their diet. Buffalo normally is quite a lean meat. You don't find the marbling in it that you do from beef, especially today's corn fed. But ranchers today are beginning to grain feed buffalo in their herds. And you do find some moderately tender meat. I say moderate. It's never really like the grain-finished cattle that are kept in a pan and have more fat than meat on them. But the taste of buffalo is like beef only better. It has a slightly sweeter taste than beef. It doesn't have a gamey taste like deer meat. And incidentally, that might be something you'd be interested in knowing. In the days of the early west, you didn't call deer meat venison. You were an Eastern greenhorn if you called it venison. It was plain old deer meat. Well, the buffalo herds were decimated by the whites. Here in Colorado, by 1845, there were virtually no buffalo

left in this state. The great herds in the Dakotas and Montana were still in existence. And when the railroads came through in the 70s, why they used to have great hunting expeditions, so called. Actually, I don't think it was very much sport, because they'd take train excursions. And the men would lift up the windows in the train. And they would take a gun like this one. And they would aim out of the window of the train and shoot the buffalo from their seats, real sport. Actually, if you wanted to have some sport, if you took bow and arrow as the Indians did, and would ride into a herd of perhaps 60 or 70 or 100 buffalo and try to get the good animals that were in the center just behind the front of the herd. Buffalo always traveled where the large older bulls were in the very first part of the herd.

And then as you went back, you had the younger cows. And they were the best eating. Then the younger bulls and then the old stragglers were out in the back. And to shoot these, you had to ride in right among the buffalo. And of course, they would be spooked by your riding in on a horse. And so you'd have to go full tilt, and then pump arrows into the buffalo and hope that you hit it in a vital enough place as you were traveling at full gallop. And this was not an easy trick, especially since the buffalo tend to be pretty mean when you're riding with them. And I know this is a fact because this last spring, a friend of mine who raises buffaloes up in Wyoming. He was driving a herd of 60 animals from chug water Wyoming up to near Wheatland. And we heard of those up there. We had to keep them at a full run all day long from nine o'clock in the morning until we got them up to a pasture area about five in the afternoon.

And you have to keep them going, going, going, going. We used four people on horseback and two four-wheel drive trucks to herd them as we moved. But several times, and in point of fact, there was one cow there, number eight, they called her, who ended up the day having a string of horse hair from the horn. She had a crooked, sort of broken horn. But she used to turn and charge the horses. And the horsemen that were riding this were pretty skillful people. And they were able to wheel and dodge from the buffalo coming at them, except that at the end of the day, as I say, that one number eight had actual horse tail hair hanging from the horn. It shows how close they could get. When a buffalo decides to charge, perhaps it's in a herd, and it's going straight ahead. And suddenly, Zango, it just makes a right angle turn and turns to the back.

And there is no signal except for the fact that the tail goes straight up in the air, just like a flag, or like a flagpole. The buffalo in the herd at the end of the day had the tongues hanging out, and Pete Gardner said to me, he said, you can be sure of one thing. And that is that the mouth is open. And you can be sure of nothing else, because if you think that they're tired out and won't charge you, just get a little bit closer and see what happens. They're very, very strong and have a lot of stamina. Now, the Indians very often would take bows, narrows, and shoot the men, arrows into the buffalo. And then they'd come up with a long club, and they would brain the buffalo with this long work club. I have one with a handle about so long and around pointed top to it, and they'd just go clunk. The guts of the buffalo were considered one of the most tasty things.

They called them booties. That came from the French word Boudin, which is a blood sausage in France. But the French Canadian trappers used to take the guts from the buffalo, wash them out, sometimes, or use the upper intestine that had the fresh chewed grass that was not digested yet. And they would put this in the fire and make a type of sausage from it and eat this. Some of the early descriptions are less than appetizing, and I won't trouble you with them. But when the whites came out and began to kill the buffalo, they took it for only two things. That was the tongue and the hide. Now, the hides, of course, they used to make coats. And even the military outfitted all of their western soldiers for winter work with long, great coats made of buffalo hides with the hair on the outside, real good, heavy, curly hair. The tongue was considered the greatest delicacy

of the 19th century, and was sold not only in Eastern restaurants such as Delmonicos, but also was shipped abroad for the fine restaurants of Europe in the middle and latter part of the 19th century. And buffalo tongue, it's kind of hard to find these days, because there's only one tongue per buffalo, and they don't kill that many buffaloes. But it has a very fine texture to it, almost like a pate. And you cook it much as you do a regular beef tongue. And I have one cooking over on the cooking set. But before I go, I wanted to show you a couple of other things. This, incidentally, is a Marlin Ballard Action Buffalo gun. It's a 45 caliber gun. It's got a big hole in the top of it. And they had a wiping stick or a stick to clear out the barrel, though it was one of the breach loaders. And this drops down. You put a great big 45 caliber bullet in this thing,

and the shell itself is quite long. And then you have a set trigger and bang. So it goes. Now, something else that we had in those days, and you still find these on some Colorado ranches, or actually any Western ranch, although you never see it. And this is called a running iron. I shouldn't say we have them here. I've not seen them, but I'm told it. Many of the ranches have running irons. This is used to change brands. This is a rustler's iron. And with this shape, you can alter anybody's brand to be the one that you want it to be. Now, this is a green river knife. And a green river knife is made by the Russell Company in Massachusetts, and it's still made today.

The knife was used for skinning, scalping, for flensing out an animal. And that's why it has that nice curved shape to it. They make these in various sizes. But this is the earliest known knife on the American frontier. And on the blade, very up near the hilt, it says J. Russell and Company, green river works. And they used to say, give a twin up to the green, which meant to stick it to him right up to the trademark on the blade itself. This knife is one of the great things of the American West that has survived. Now, I'm going to take you over to the cooking set. And we've got a buffalo tongue that's been boiling here. We put a couple of bay leaves and peppercorns. And you see this isn't very big. And when you consider that in those days, well, in the 1880s, there was a freight train,

one freight train alone, of 72 freight cars, filled with nothing but buffalo tongues. You can imagine how many it took to fill. One freight car, let alone 72 freight cars, filled with ease. They would smoke these and send these back east. And when you want to serve a tongue while you boil it for several hours with bay leaf and peppercorn, and a little grated onion, garlic, if you like, then you can slice it off. It's important to, of course, get the outside skin off of it. And this area back in the lower part here is not quite as good eating. But the fine part up at the tongue, I just cut through here. See how nice and the pink that thing is? And you'll slice off thin slices like that. And then take the skin, cut the skin off,

and arrange these on a platter. And you can use a real interesting sauce that we're going to show you how to make. And you'll lay these up on a platter. And this tongue is not finished in cooking yet. It's almost, but it's not quite yet. I'm putting it back in here. But I'll show you a recipe for a sauce that's great fun. And that is quite an easy one. Simply take a cup of mayonnaise, and this is your base. Then you'll add a little bit of horseradish to this. And I like to use a fair amount. So I use a teaspoon of horseradish. Get a good hot one. I like a bunch of it.

You can adjust it to suit your choice. And then get capers. Now these are nastersham buds. And they have a really good flavor. And use some of the juice too. And I've got two tablespoons about here. And you can mix this up in the horseradish and the capers served over top of the buffalo tongue is really delicious. Now you can serve this cold, or you can heat it. When you heat it, it thins out very nicely. And it has a nice sauce that you can pour over the top of it. Let's see how it goes. Now, see the capers are pickled in vinegar. And it gives a real nice sharpness to it,

along with the horseradish. So take this, and you'll use your slices of buffalo tongue, or use beef tongue if you don't have access to a buffalo. And try this sauce over the top of it. It's really, very tasty. Now we're going to show you another dish. Let's see, put him back in there. And this is an early Western one that has the type of foods that they brought west with them. First off, I think before I begin that, I'm going to start heating up a frying pan here, and then I'll put a steak in it, because that's going to be the next dish. We're going to show you a beef steak and oyster dish. And I'm going to put a steak, or I'm going to wait until that gets hot. As I said, the people who came west brought dried fruits

with them. And they used a lot of pumpkin, dried apples, nuts, raisins, that type of thing. And there is a dish that's called Trapper's Fruit. And it's a very, very easy one to make. If you go to your supermarket, you can buy dried apples, and these come in little packages. Or you can get, if you're in Pennsylvania Dutch country, you can get apple schnitz. And just put your dried apples into a great big pot. And these will absorb their weight and more in moisture. And they cook down into a type of apple sauce, but it has a nice solidity to it. Then you take two cups of regular canned apple sauce, and drop that in. And this is a great favorite of mine, also of my customers.

See, I have a restaurant near Denver. Now, this is two cups of pumpkin. And we'll drop pumpkin in. Now, the addition of pumpkin was something that I just recently learned. I had always had it as apples, nuts, raisins, brown sugar, and rum. But I ran into a reference to use of pumpkin in with it. And I tried it, and it was really just great. Then half a cup of good plump raisins. And we'll just throw those in. And then you want some kind of nuts. You want walnuts, or pecans, or hazelnuts. But I have two things that I especially like myself. And one of them, which is not at all early west as far as I know, and that is macadamia nuts.

And these are from Hawaii. And you can buy these bits and pieces in cans, or you can buy the big ones and crush them yourself. And I use a cup of these in there. You can adjust it to suit your taste. And then something else that you find today in many of the grocery stores. And these are sunflower seed hearts. And these things are salted and crisp. And they're really very tasty. And add those into the mess. It looks like a mess, but it's going to taste good. And honey. About three, oh, three, four tablespoons of honey into it as a sweetener. Now honey is kind of interesting because it was not native to the Americas. The honey bee came from England. It was brought by the settlers. And the Indians just say that here goes the rum in here. This is two, three ounces of dark rum.

Indians just to say that when you saw the honey bee, you knew that the white man was not far behind, because they would range out 75 miles from their home base. And the whites brought the honey bees. So it was time to move west as soon as you saw honey bees. And we'll add some water into this and set it to boiling. Now this should be like a thick fruit com pot. And the pumpkin, honey, apples, nuts, raisins, it makes a really delicious combination. Now I think our pan is good for the steak. We'll let this boil. Yeah, you cook the trapper's fruit for about 35, 40 minutes, maybe 45 minutes.

And until it's all broken down, the apple pieces are broken down. Then you can serve it either as a side dish with a meal, as we do in the restaurant, or you can use it as a dessert. I had some guests the other night who liked it so well as a side dish that they wanted big bowls of it for dessert. And when you serve it for dessert, I take whipped cream and add a little bit of vanilla to your whipped cream, or some grated orange peel to your whipped cream, and serve this hot and shoot it with whipped cream with a bomb, if you have it, or preferably, of course, the real whipped cream with a little bit of vanilla or some sort of flavoring in it. Now I'm going to do another dish. I found this in my family's attic, actually, in a cookbook that was up there.

It was called the American Cookbook Publish in 1885. And I was looking through it, thinking that I might be able to find some kind of new recipe that would incorporate both seafood and meat. So many of the restaurants are doing lobster tails and beef combinations, and I, with a high price of lobster tails, so I didn't want to do that, but I came upon a recipe called Beef Steak and Oysters. And it was listed as a specialty of the palace hotel in early-day San Francisco. The palace was sort of the wall door of the West Coast back in the 1875. I think it was built or in about that period. And it was the host to all kinds of greats. President Grant, the last king of Hawaii, all of the important people of the time that traveled into the West always stayed at the palace. In fact, at the time of the earthquake, Caruso, the famous singer, escaped during the fire, dressed in a bath towel from the palace.

They did rebuild it after the earthquake. Now, to make this, and it's a pretty simple dish, you take some butter, and a little skillet. In the meantime, you're frying a steak. I have over there. Basically, the steak is nothing but a pan-broyled or fried or, if you like, a charcoal-broyled steak. That's the way we do them in the restaurant. I think I'll take this, give you a little, put the tongue over here, and you can see this procedure. Take a little bit of butter. Oh, about a tablespoon of butter. And let it get melted and fairly hot. Let's see how our steak's going. Yeah. Then take about, let's see, about a tablespoon and a half

of flour. You want to make a roux with this, and let your butter melt, and your flour mix together. This will give you your sauce, or base for your sauce. You need to get that good and hot. I might add a bit more butter in here. You want to get this really good and hot, because then when you add your water to it, why it will make a nice smooth sauce. It doesn't have any lumps in it. These nice big limes that are on the market are really terrific.

Now let's see, I've got my roux. You see how it's bubbling. As soon as it's bubbling like that, it's about ready to add a little bit of water, and it thickens up very quickly. Then take a cup of oysters, and with the juice, add the oysters in, and you want to simmer these until the oysters edges begin to curl, and you can take some pimento pieces. And these are nice both for taste and also for color. And that's about tablespoon and a half of pimento strips, and juice of a lime.

It depends on how big your lime is, but one this size is for this much about a half of a lime is plenty. A full lime if you've got other ones. They're the smaller ones. Then a little chopped parsley, and a hair of accent, or monosodium glutamate, which I still use. I haven't been told not to yet, but I hear that it's in the wind. A little salt, and some black pepper. Let that cook, and then take yourself your steak platter. Just your steak out of the, and the oysters are already curly. It doesn't take very much time.

Oysters were a great thing on the American frontier. They used to ship them west in barrels with the mouths of the oysters up, and they would feed them with salt, water, and cornmeal as they came west. You see, just top that, and serve that to your guest. I've got enough oysters here for a couple of people. But this makes a really good eating dish if you like oysters. And the oyster beef combination is a first rate one. I have a cookbook that we've put out. This is called frying pan's west, and the station will tell you how you can get one of these cookbooks. This has all of the recipes from all of the whole series of shows that we've done. There are some recipes for holiday things, also various drinks. So with that, I'll say good night, bye-bye.