Roadside Rest

The Cowboy Cook Who Could

In an early TV documentary originating in New York, a young David Brinkley declared that "Cowboys are the worstfed workers in the world."

One soft summer evening, I passed on the quote to Johnny Cosper. We were at his wilderness cookfire near the confluence of Reservation Creek and Black River in mountainous eastern Arizona. Johnny at 75 still hired out as roundup cook. He thought a minute, then said: "I never knowed a cowboy to stop eating long enough to complain."

No argument, range fare violated every modern dietary concept. Grease and starch led ingredients. What wouldn't fry was boiled. What wouldn't boil was baked - all well done. Anything fresher than raisins was fit only for rabbits.

But also beyond dispute, the cowboy thrived on menus laden with cholesterol and carhydrates. He stayed skinny and lived forever.

In a profession rapidly corrupted by pickup truck transport and refrigeration and preservation packaging, Johnny was one of the few cowboy cooks who could still make do with basics. Provide him with a quarter of beef; dry staples, including a sack of flour; two Dutch ovens and two pots, and he'd produce meals of infinite variety and gourmet flavor. Take his beans, and if you did, you'd want seconds. He culled the rocks from a couple of pounds of Colorado pintos and submerged them under warm water in an oven sitting in the breakfast coals. As the vessel came to a boil, he added cubes of salt pork. Past lunch-time and on into the dusk, that iron oven moved in and out of the fire, ever on the verge of a boil, taking on liquid replenish-ment from a pan also warming in the fire. In the last hour, Johnny added an onion and a little salt and half a palm of Eagle Brand chili. ("Long on taste; short on heat.") The major supplement to cowboy beans was beef. On a dude trail ride, the meat came from a town butcher, but Johnny was well acquainted with the frontier saying, "Any man who ate his own beef was a sorry roper." From the loin, Johnny slabbed steaks about as thick as a mule's lip, floured them, and dropped them ker-plop into smoking tallow. When the steaks were done through, most cowboy customers were willing to wait another 15 minutes for the chops to tenderize in a separate steaming oven.

Johnny's pot roast was worthy of royalty, but no king was so lucky. Somehow the smoke of oak and juniper seeped right through the metal oven to permeate the meat. The roast took on a saddle leather coloration that no electric stove could duplicate. Likewise browned shiny were the potatoes and carrots and other vegetables.

Johnny's lumpless gravy complemented his biscuits. A cowboy cook was judged by his bread more than anything else, and Johnny was a master baker. He needed no thermometer to tell when the live coals roofing the oven lid had crowned his light white biscuits golden crispy. Johnny signaled mealtime by flipping up a center biscuit with gnarled forefinger. Sometimes he'd threaten, "Better eat 'fore I throw it in the fire."

That was about as testy an utterance as Johnny could muster. In his authoritative Shoot Me a Biscuit: Stories of Yesterday's Roundup Cook, Dan Moore asserts, "One thing most of them had in common was the temperament of a bear with a sore paw." Because, says Ramon F. Adams in his classic Come An' Git It, "Not many ever worked under greater difficulties or with Few conveniences and yet was so successful at his calling." Adding details in her Chuck Wagon Cookin' is Stella Hughes: "Anyone who has ever spent one hour over a campfire on a windy day, or wet - who has burned his thumb, spilled the coffee, scorched the beans, found blowflies have gotten into the meat, and the water keg is empty will understand why cooks are techy."

Not so Johnny. Unlike many cowboys turned vinegar, Johnny didn't resent loquacious city sportsmen. He simply refused to change his own ways while "rasslin' the pots and pans," a reed-thin, quizzical mix of impeccable courtesy and integrity, painful self-reliance, and fanatical faith in the work ethic.

On a recreational trail ride, Johnny would cook whatever fresh produce and main dishes the dudes desired. He did chicken right when the Colonel was a corporal. To die for, were Johnny's rainbow trout dredged in cornmeal and swiftly sautéed.

But his virtuosity peaked in old-time desserts derived from ingredients that would keep for months outdoors. Johnny's rice pudding and cherry cobbler were famous throughout the Greenlee County mountains. One dusk, after riding all day without food, we reined up the creek to meet the down-canyon breeze bearing the ambrosia of fruit, vanilla, and wheat.

"Bless me, Jesse," one of us sighed. "I'll bet Johnny has built a peach pie.' Yes he had, and after graining and rubbing down the horses, we lined up like famished refugees for a filling feast crowned with that noble pastry. At the time, I thought David Brinkley must have confused cowboys with truck drivers.