The Texas Cowboy Kitchen

"Grady's probably the only guy I know who could dress up a Frito pie and make it look pretty, and the only cook who'd think of marinating skirt steak in Dr. Pepper. . . . [He is equally] at ease in a worn pair of leather chaps as he is wielding a saute pan."—Nolan Ryan, Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher and lifelong cowboy

As at home on the coffee table as it is on the kitchen counter, this definitive cowboy cookbook features historical essays and photographs depicting life on the Chisholm Trail alongside recipes that reinvent cowboy cuisine. Cowboy-turned-chef Grady Spears reinvents chuckwagon dishes from Barbecued Quail Tamales to Pork Tenderloin with Watermelon Salsa to Butterscotch Pie by elevating them to haute cowboy cuisine.

Equal parts cookbook, history lesson, and photographic essay, The Texas Cowboy Kitchen blends Spears's distinctive culinary recipes with June Naylor's narrative of life on the Chisholm Trail and Erwin E. Smith's award-winning black-and-white cowboy photography and four-color culinary shots. Divided into 10 chapters ranging from "Campfire Cocktails" to "Things You Don't Rope" to "Chuckwagon Secrets," The Texas Cowboy Kitchen contains 100 original recipes perfected at Spears's renowned former restaurants, the Chisholm Club in Fort Worth, Texas, and the Nutt House Restaurant in Granbury, Texas—both of which satisfied wags of hungry customers.

Native Texan and cowboy-turned-chef Grady Spears has created cowboy menus for restaurants he co-owned in Fort Worth, Texas; Granbury, Texas; and Beverly Hills, California, as well as for the Bush family at the Texas Governor's Mansion. This is Grady's fifth cookbook. He owns Grady's Restaurant in his hometown of Fort Worth, Texas.

Award-winning journalist and author June Naylor has covered food, dining, and travel for more than twenty years. She is a frequent contributor to a number of Texas newspapers and magazines, as well as to national periodicals and Web sites. With Grady, June wrote The Texas Cowboy Kitchen. A native Texan, she lives in Fort Worth, Texas.