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Foodies

[click "Play", Chef Erich Owen talks with Susan]

 

Erich-owen-pensive Since 2008, Erich Owen has worked as the Executive Chef of The Chop House at Telluride's historic New Sheridan Hotel. His New American cuisine emphasizes quality fresh ingredients impeccably prepared with a light, deft touch in the French tradition for a simple but always elegant presentation. If you are a patron of the 30th annual Telluride Wine Festival, the proof of Erich's skills will be in the pudding – or whatever it is he prepares for the kick-off luncheon. Chef Erich Owen co-hosts the Telluride Wine Festival opening feast, Thursday, June 23, 11:30 a.m – 1:30 p.m. And that's big news. Here's why.

In the art world, there is a reflex known as The Cultural Cringe, an assumption that whatever anyone does in the arts – and we include the food arts here – is not validated until judged by those in the know from outside your world. We cry "foul."

23 June, 2011 /
[click "Play" to  hear Steve Swenson's conversation with Susan]

 

Wine poster "I cook with wine. Sometimes I even add it to the food," W.C. Fields

One of the longest running wine festivals Colorado, the Telluride Wine Festival, celebrates its 30th anniversary over a long weekend, beginning Wednesday, June 22, 5 – 7 p.m. The event starts with an opening reception at La Piazza in Mountain Village, where patrons get to mingle with guest speakers, guest chefs, homeowners, and members of the Telluride Ski & Golf Club.

Mountainfilm in Telluride and Telluride Bluegrass are festivals for folks. Both have reputations for a welcome-to-the-neighborhood feel. But Wine Fest? Is it all about a sleek, well-heeled fraternity? Them, not us?

21 June, 2011 /

By Lisa Barlow

Frozen Pond I am sitting in the most celebrated restaurant in the world and I have just been served a piece of ice. It is almost as if the pretty white bowl in front of me is empty, except that across its top is a perfect meniscus of clear frozen water. “Frozen Pond” the waiter announces with a smile, while another waiter taps mint dust with green tea and sugar across the top. We are handed spoons and asked to crack the ice. “Tastes like a stick of gum” my husband whispers. But I am decades away in a pink polka dotted parka that I have unzipped to fill with wind so it will sail me on my childhood ice skates across Long Island’s Mecox Bay.

Many things can happen to you if you are lucky enough to eat at El Bulli, Ferran Adrià’s extraordinary culinary laboratory on Spain’s Costa Brava. And you may not really understand the nature of your experience until it is long over. Certainly there is the excitement that you are about to enjoy a great meal, as well as recognition that you are part of history. El Bulli, the restaurant, will close at the end July. But there are many other emotions engendered by what is on your plate to take you by surprise. Frozen water, for instance. What starts out as a joke (the emperor, or in this case, the diner, has no clothes!) turns into a well-placed palate cleanser with Proustian effects.

30 May, 2011 /

 By Claire Ricks and Marina Marlens “Nutrition” This video is to show the important role nutrition plays among the world in developing children. Using Peru to focus in on as a small fraction of this issue, we hope to put the spotlight on the massive...

23 May, 2011 /

Wooly suit For escapist entertainment at its finest, follow in Telluride Inside... and Out's footsteps and make a beeline for New York's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, the former home of industrial magnate Andrew Carnegie. (And then later to Ma Peche. See below.)

The featured show at the Cooper-Hewitt is "Set in Style: The Jewelry of Van Cleef & Arpels." The most comprehensive exhibition ever organized of the masterworks of the vaunted company, the exhibit is generating lots of buzz – and very long lines. For good reason: "Set In Style" is a magnum of Champagne. The cat's meow. Kitsch-fabulous razzle-dazzlement at its best –  and brightest. (Shades recommended.) 

Among the 350 pieces on display is bling worn by Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco (my fingers are genuflecting as I write out the title), Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Marlene Dietrich, Eva Peron and Greta Garbo to name a few of the high profile ladies who lunched.

21 April, 2011 /

Mycologist and author Paul Stamets will return as a featured speaker at the Telluride Mushroom Festival’s 31st annual gathering in Colorado, Aug. 18-21.

For over 30 years, Paul has named new mushroom species, pioneered countless techniques in the field of edible and medicinal mushroom cultivation, and written six ground-breaking books, including his latest – Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World.

01 April, 2011 /

by Lisa Barlow

Wilted pea shoots and scallops The closest I’ve ever come to living on a farm was the month I spent working as an intern in the kitchen of a New York City restaurant. That’s because the farm came to us. Literally. Not only did the restaurant order fresh produce and humanely raised meat and poultry from local farms, the farmers themselves came to regular 4-course “Meet the Farmer” dinners to talk about the food that was on diners’ plates.  All we were missing was a few acres of dirt.

I know the whole Farm to Table movement is pretty trendy right now. Jaded restaurant reviewers have referred to this kind of cuisine as “haute barnyard” and the chefs who prepare it as “lettuce whisperers”. But it is trendy for a reason. Aside from all the political and ethical arguments for eating sustainably and locally, there is this: the food tastes good! I guess I went to work behind the scenes to find out why.

25 March, 2011 /
[click "Play" to listen to Erika Gordon's conversation with Susan]

 

Food.inc poster-flyer “Eating can be one dangerous business. Don’t take another bite till you see Robert Kenner’s Food, Inc.,” wrote Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, “If the way to an audience’s heart is through its stomach, ‘Food, Inc.’ is a movie you’re going to love.”

The film being shown this Sunday, March 20, 4 p.m., as part of the Telluride Film Festival's 2011 Sunday at the Palm series received a an average rating 8 on a scale of 10 on Rotten Tomatoes, pure poetry since this movie is all about food, the good, the bad, mostly rotten.

 

19 March, 2011 /

by Lisa Barlow

Colcannon My grandmother’s Irish heritage showed up in her hilariously salty sense of humor and in her cooking. As prolific as the jokes were, however, she could only cook one thing: a baked potato. But it was irresistibly delicious. Her secret was simple. She just added half a stick of butter to each potato and mashed it in its skin. Next to the overcooked meat patty and the canned wax beans, the potato shone like a pot of gold.

It wasn’t until I went to Ireland that I celebrated my own connection to the country.  As a child growing up in Manhattan, St. Patrick’s Day was a little scary. We lived at the end of the parade route and the trip home from school was an obstacle course of drunken merrymakers, regurgitated green beer and invitations to “Kiss Me, I’m Irish.”

But after my honeymoon at Ashford Castle, where "The Quiet Man" was filmed, I was a committed holiday celebrant. We mark the holiday with pints of Guinness and Colcannon, a delicious mixture of cabbage, leeks and potatoes.

 

15 March, 2011 /
[click "Play", John Wontrobski talks with Susan about the event and his background as a chef]

 

Rico Hotel Publication It's tough to connect the dots: a Telluride Deputy Marshal, a nonprofit dedicated to ending interpersonal violence in the greater Telluride community, St. Patrick's Day, and, well, Shepherd's Pie, but here's the story.

On March 17, 5 – 9 p.m., John Wontrobski, Telluride Marshal and board member of the San Miguel Resource Center, is Guest Chef at the Argentine Grille in Rico. The special menu John put together for that night includes Lamb Shepherd's Pie served either with oysters on the half shell –  or a salad and vegetable (greens for St. Patrick's Day) and Irish soda bread (also in honor of the holiday). The entree is priced at $25 and half the proceeds from the meal go to – and here's the punch line – the San Miguel Resource Center.

15 March, 2011 /