Jim Harrison's Bear Posole to Ambrose's Undaunted Red Beans

Eat Our Words: Montana Writers’ Cookbook

By Allen M. Jones, 1-07-06

If you’re a bachelor (like me), and thus stereotypically disinclined to turn on a stove, if you would have surely starved prior to the invention of the microwave, there's something vaguely plaintive about time spent with a cookbook. Paging through even the finest selection of recipes, the attention invariably wanders. There might be some good possibilities here, but they're all just out of reach. The recent collection, Eat our Words: Montana Writers' Cookbook (Farcountry Press, $19.95) is something of an exception. A compilation of recipes, sure, but the folks doing the recommending are all writers rather than (for the most part) professional chefs, and so have a knack for holding the reader's interest.

Functioning as much as an introduction to Montana's literary scene as a cookbook, Eat Our Words has about it the warm air of a class reunion, maybe a holiday dinner with distant family: Here are all these smart, interesting folks you haven’t seen for a while. To flip through these 170-some pages of recipes -- each one contributed by another Montana poet, essayist, novelist, journalist, memoirist -- is to be reminded of what a rich authorial treasure trove the region can claim as its own. Jim Harrison to Annick Smith, Bill Kittredge to Mary Clearman Blew, Jon A. Jackson to Maile Meloy, it would be tough to find a more diverse collection of voices gathered together under one cover. And then you have the recipes themselves. Raspberry Pepper Jelly, Mango Salso for Grilled Wild Salmon, Big Hole Lamb Roast, Venison Burritos. It’s not for me to pronounce on the legitimacy of the dishes that might result from the various stirrings and bakings (I’m a gourmand the way Vespa is a motorcycle), but just having the opportunity to associate favorite recipes with a few of your favorite writers, it’s worth the price of admission.

Jim Harrison, famous for his appetites as much as his writing (and the writing about his appetites), contributes a dish called “Bear Posole," about which he says, “I had this dish years ago in the Sierra Madre and have made it several times myself to avoid letting gift meat go to waste." Annick Smith, a resident of Montana but a citizen of the world, contributes a dish called “Körözött," described as “a Hungarian cheese spread that is the hors d’oeuvre of preference for my family, passed from grandmother to mother to two sisters and me, and now our grown children." Rick Bass chimes in with “Rebecca’s ‘My Hair is on Fire’ Lobster Soup" and James Lee Burke shows off his Louisiana roots by offering up the recipe for “Crawfish Etoufee." In one of the more intricate dishes, Russell Chatham, owner of the Livingston Bar and Grille, gives us his recipe for “Italian Sausage and Ricotta Cannelloni," described by Chatham as “one of the most sensuous comfort dishes there is, but you cannot use the store-bought dried pasta tubes, as the difference between those and fresh pasta is like the difference between a hippopotamus and a mongoose."

Despite some conspicuous absences in the lineup (Richard Ford, Thomas McGuane, Doug Peacock), Eat our Words serves as both a fine introduction to Montana’s community of letters as well as a useful addition to your stovetop bookshelf.




* Full disclosure: My own recipe for an apple pie is included on page 164

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