Taste of the Rockies

Mmmmmmmmmm! I've been cooking more since I moved to Colorado than I ever have in my life. I like to think I've gotten pretty good at it. Gerard hasn't complained. But isn't it funny how different cooks develop their own particular spin on food? Mom and Memaw were both excellent cooks, but if you were to set a plate of meatloaf with sides of mashed potatoes, green beans, black eyed peas, hot rolls, a glass of tea and a slice of lemon pie in front of me, but didn't tell me who made each item, I could tell you in an instant who made what. I know I'm developing my own "flavor" as well, though my cooking style is heavily influenced by both mom and Memaw. Sometimes I'll be cooking or baking something new and suddenly remember a technique, some advice or an ingredient that mom or Memaw impressed upon me years ago when I was just a helper sitting on their kitchen counter sticking my fingers in everything. And yet I still find my own way to do things or dig up something neat online that really works for me. For example, my chicken and dumplings tastes a lot like mom's, but I roll my dough into dumplings where she dropped them in by the spoonful. And I still make bite-sized cinnamon rolls with leftover pie crust just like Memaw taught me, but I've discovered an additional technique to make them a bit flakier.

And then there are things I never, ever learned as a kid. Things that are only in my life now because of my coming home to the Rockies and my culinary philosophy. Breading and frying chicken is pretty basic. It looks a lot like the picture above. But skinning and slicing full grown buffalo testicles is quite another task altogether. That ain't chicken frying in that picture up there.

Now in case you weren't aware, I like to stick to simple recipes made from scratch using local ingredients. As such, most modern cookbooks are useless to me and cookbooks that fit within my cooking philosophy are pretty darn hard to come by. So thank God for the internet. You can find anything in that series of tubes. And so I did when it came time to figure out what to do with my buffalo balls. That's right. Rocky mountain oysters. Bull fries. Buffalo fries. Prairie oysters. Montana tendergroin. Swingin' beef. Cowboy caviar. Huevos del toro.

So there they are sitting on a plate. Now what? How to get them from this less appetizing state to the mouth watering crunchables in the first photo? Here's everything you never wanted to know about the basic process:

1. Using a sharp knife or kitchen shears, slice the outer covering and peel it off.
   
2. Slice the orangish flesh into strips and dip in a flour, salt and pepper mix.
   
3. Drop in very hot, deep oil in a cast iron skillet.
   
4. Remove from skillet and drain on clean cloth.
   
5. Serve hot with roasted brussels sprouts from your garden.
   

Enjoy!