Family Flavor
Seventh-generation Central Coast rancher Elizabeth Poett gathers stories and regional recipes for her debut cookbook
Poett harvests tomatoes from a garden on Rancho San Julian, which has been in her family as a beef operation since 1837.
Written by Keith Hamm | Photographs by B.J. Goolnick
Writing a cookbook, it turns out, is near and dear to the act of cooking itself. Both endeavors demand proper technique to combine just the right amount of ingredients. Good timing is critical, too, whether you’re pulling that brisket off the grill or serving up your writing project for mass consumption. And, of course, there’s presentation. Just ask seventh-generation Santa Barbara County cattle rancher and cooking-show star Elizabeth Poett, author of THE RANCH TABLE: RECIPES FROM A YEAR OF HARVESTS, CELEBRATIONS, AND FAMILY DINNERS ON A HISTORIC CALIFORNIA RANCH. (HarperCollins, $40)
“I want the book to teach people about agriculture and the ranching community and how people have been working on the land for generations.”
About 10 years ago, Poett started sorting the book’s main ingredients, a trove of handed-down family recipes, some handwritten in Spanish by her great-great-grandmother. Around the same time, she began hosting big country lunches centered on fresh local ingredients topped off with ranch tours and talks on the property’s history.
Poett then refined her techniques, from braising to baking to canning, for streaming audiences worldwide with the 2021 debut of the Magnolia Network’s Ranch to Table cooking show. That a full-blown cookbook would come next just made sense.
“I really wanted the book to be an introduction to the ranch and the region,” Poett says, crediting lifelong friend and the book’s co-author Georgia Freedman with “helping me put myself out there.”
“Like the show,” she adds, “I want it to teach people about agriculture and the ranching community here and how people have been working on the land to produce food for generations.”
After a short history of Rancho San Julian—owned by her family since 1837—she writes about ranch life and her cooking and hosting philosophies, then rolls out the recipes by season.
For example, spring includes a Santa Maria–style tri-tip with pico de gallo, a centerpiece of Central Coast barbecues. Summertime grilled peaches are followed by beef empanadas and her great-grandmother’s enchiladas. Fall dinners include veggies harvested from the garden behind the ranch’s 200-year-old casa. Winter favorites include a three-cheese grilled sandwich on sourdough with onion jam, plus Mexican wedding cookies and cowboy brittle. Poett closes with a classic New Year’s standing rib roast and perhaps a Golden State old-fashioned or two.
All said, the book is 320 pages filled with 120 recipes, plus more than 150 color photographs by B.J. Goolnick, who also serves as the director of photography for Ranch to Table, now in its fourth season. Talk about presentation: Goolnick’s eye sweeps from the maple drizzle on a stack of blueberry-yogurt pancakes to generational portraits and candid smiles that will be passed down as surely as those old family recipes.
“Being able to share this history and these recipes, it’s very personal,” Poett says. “It means a lot that my kids have the same flavors in their lives as their great-great-grandparents had. And having this connection to food, to cooking seasonally and cooking for lots of people—I love all those things.” Available at Chaucer's Books.
Lemon Buttermilk Fried Chicken Drizzled with Honey
When I make fried chicken, I brine drumsticks in a mixture that has lots of rosemary and lemon to add a distinctive California flavor, then I drizzle honey on the chicken just before serving. If you’ve never deep-fried anything before, the process might seem intimidating, but once you try it, you’ll see that it’s very straightforward. The trick for me is to get my cooking station organized before I start: I prepare my flour mixture and pour my buttermilk in a bowl and set them on the counter next to the stove, and I have tongs and a potholder or oven mitts nearby. That way, when I start frying, I won’t have to walk away from the stove or go looking for something; I can just focus on cooking.
From The Ranch Table by Elizabeth Poett. Copyright © 2023 by Elizabeth Poett. Reprinted by permission of Magnolia Publications/William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
