Hanging around the Festival of the American West at Utah State University in Logan gives the impression of having gone back in time to a mountain man rendezvous. Which is not as strange as it sounds. After all, it is Cache Valley.
Last week there were immigrant craftsmen, native artisans, dressed in buckskin and gingham, mountain men and every other Western type together again on the untamed frontier of the USU campus. At this Great West Fair, designed as an educational and entertaining experience, you wander leisurely among the booths and exhibits, trying to imagine yourself as a participant in the craft history of the American West.It is not hard to imagine, because once you enter the gates, everything is painstakingly authentic. Even the majority of patrons belong, with their cowboy boots and hats. But because it was so incredibly hot, even under tents on a stadium field, I ran right for the Frontier Ice Cream Parlor and got two scoops of delicious homemade raspberry ice cream. After that, it was hard for me to even think of eating anything hot, even though the Dutch ovens were turning out numerous culinary miracles.
The best part of the festival is the diverse and delicious food.
Dick Michaud, executive director of the International Dutch Oven Society, tried to orient me. Dick, who retired this year from the financial aids office of USU, brought the Dutch oven cook-off to the festival in 1985. As an experienced Scoutmaster whose Scouts would eat his peach cobbler even if it were burned, Dick's interest in cooking has steadily grown.
When he conceived the idea for incorporating Dutch ovens into the festival, he did some intensive research. He found that Utahns buy more Dutch ovens than the people of any other state. Since Utah is a family state, Dutch ovens and their delicious products fit right in, serving a bonding need.
He found that the Dutch oven is perfect for the back yard, the canyon, down the river and for family reunions. Unlike the barbeque, you can bring it inside during the winter and keep on using it.
The festival has publicized the Dutch oven as an instrument for upscale cooking. Who would have dreamed that a lemon meringue pie or a baked Alsaka could come out of a cast-iron pot set on a layer of hot coals? Dick says that there are now about 25 satellite cook-offs in other states, and he has a feeling that he has a "tiger by the tail."
Dick traces the historical beginnings of Dutch-oven cooking to the first casting in 1770. It had three legs and a handle and was nicknamed "spider." Lewis and Clark, the explorers of the Northwest, had a Dutch oven, and so did John Wesley Powell, who explored the Colorado River.
All of which suggests that the earliest way of cooking is still the best.
Dick even tells a story about Osborne Russell, a fur trapper with Jim Bridger, who trapped in Cache Valley. Russell was eating roots cooked in cast iron pots for 11 days during one expedition. On the 12th day, he killed two grizzly bears. He said he was lucky that the bears were especially greasy, because the pot could easily adapt after having boiled only water for so long. That is the beauty of non-stick pots, says Dick, "you just wipe it with a towel and dry it - no soap."
No one would consider the primitive mountain men upscale in eating habits, but they were accustomed to feast or famine. And the Dutch oven was perfect for it. When they killed a buffalo, they sizzled a row of "hump ribs," then began their repast by drinking some of the blood, which reminded them of warm milk. Then they would eat the liver raw, flavored with the contents of the gall bladder. They would make a thick mixture of blood and the rich marrow extracted from leg bones. According to Western historians, It turned the stomachs of Easterners, but made the faces of mountain men "shine with grease and gladness."
They ate hump ribs and partially roasted strips of tenderloin and chunks of tongue. The "fleece" was an especially prized inch-thick layer of fat that lay just under the buffalo hide. Once in a while they added a roasted beaver tail to the menu. No wonder Dutch ovens are making a comeback. M-m-m.