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Foodies

[click "Play" button to hear Susan's conversation with Barclay]

Barclay Daranyi and husband Tony are now the proud owners/operators of the of popular CSA farm, Indian Ridge, in Norwood, Colorado – and regular contributors to Telluride Inside...and Out with recipes and words of wisdom about sustainable food practices.

This week, Barclay is digging in the soil, where her roots, literal and metaphorical, lie.

Smith-Daranyi PA and NJ 2007137 Barclay grew up on Caretaker Farm, started by her parents in 1969 and now one of the oldest organic farms in Massachusetts. Barclay's parents,Sam and Elizabeth Smith, are retired, but still live on the farm as part of the arrangement with the conservation trust, established to ensure the place remains  a working farm, affordable to future generations of farmers. Caretaker is now being worked by Don Zasada and Bridget Spann.

"Properly managed, grazing animals can actually reverse desertification and greatly increase the soil's ability to hold CO2.
Living soil holds the key to the future and our survival on this planet."

To hear more from Barclay on the subject, including the role meat plays in the Big Picture, click the "play" button to hear her podcast.

17 February, 2009 /

by Dr. Susanna Hoffman

Susanna hoffman with kalea Dr. Susanna Hoffman returns to Telluride Inside... and Out, with her Chicken Pot Pie in Filo Crust with Onions, Nutmeg, and Saffron ("The Olive and the Caper," Workman Press)

There hardly exists a nation where the mere mention of chicken pie fails to evoke homage and hunger. Greece is no exception, especially in the chill days of winter. The chicken pie of Greece, though, doesn’t arrive sunk in a deep pot and crusted on top (France) or crusted both under and over (America), both entailing the troublesome necessity of making, chilling, and rolling pie dough. Rather its dense stuffing lies between sheets of easy to use, pre-made, and available in the frozen food section: golden, crunchy filo. Inside the stewed chicken is infused with saffron and mixed with a wealth of amber-hued sauteed onions. On top of that, a dash of nutmeg combines with dill and lemon to open up all the flavors.    

14 February, 2009 /

the background

Susannainthekitchen The Showtime hit, "The United States of Tara," is about one woman with a multiple personality pile-up. In Tara's case, the condition is pathological. In Dr. Susanna Hoffman's case, it is merely circumstantial: her interests are as wide ranging as her achievements and talents.

Lucky for us, Susanna's gift for cooking – she has written five cookbooks – intersects with her passion for, no kidding, football.

The story is that growing up her older sister was all pink and lace and girly girl, and so she became the rampaging tomboy: "I knew all the baseball stars and football signals."

31 January, 2009 /

They sit glowing lime green, tawny ochre, brown gold, rusty red, in their bins at the market, thankfully almost always present, because they come twice a year, in summer and early winter. So it is rare that we undergo a dearth of pears, one sort or another always states “here I am” to the grocery list roll call. 

For that reason, pears are a preferred fruit for a poached fruit dessert. Besides, their resolute flesh more than endures a hot treatment, it triumphs in it. But while pears are plentiful, there seems to be a paucity of ideas on how to poach them, almost always entailing some version of red wine. Rather, why not turn to white wine, and for a real twist flavor it with one of the herbal teas so popular now. Here the choice is chamomile tea simmered with white wine into a luxurious, silken syrup.

For fun, crunch, and color, top off the pears with a sprinkle of tasty, green chopped pistachio nuts.  Green tea can also replace the chamomile, and a spoonful of a colorful fruit preserve can replace the nuts, make the dish fruit on fruit. Any way, the dish is an exceptional treat and will draw gleeful applause.

27 January, 2009 /

SusannaatMicheles Telluride local, Dr. Susanna Hoffman is an anthropologist, (Ph.D., U.C. Berkeley), and the author, co-author, or author/editor of ten books, five non-fiction, five on cooking, and two ethnographic films.

The list of her food titles includes “The Olives and the Caper: Adventures in Greek Cooking,” (Workman 2004), “The Well-filled Microwave,” (Workman, 1996),  “The Well-Filled Tortilla,” (Workman, 1990), “Good and Plenty-America’s New Home Cooking,” (Harper Row, 1988), and the forthcoming “America’s Big Bold Food,” the later four all co-authored with Victoria Wise.

Susanna has written numerous papers, articles, columns, and reviews for collective volumes, food magazines, popular magazines, newspapers, and academic journals. She appears frequently on television and radio shows, such as “Good Morning America,” “Oprah,” “Discovery,” “The Food Network,” CNN, PBS, and gives numerous public addresses both nationally and internationally on disaster, food, food history, and other topics. She also gives cooking demonstrations.

19 January, 2009 /

by Dr. Susanna Hoffman

January is  when the year’s crop of sweet, juicy oranges begin to arrive in markets. After many months from blossom, to bud, to fruit, they have now ripened on the trees of California and Florida, been plucked and crated, and delivered to stores awaiting their annual appearance.  Oranges are a major crop in the United States. Spanish settlers brought them to America in the 1500s, having acquired them only a century or so earlier from the Arabs. The Arabs in turn had transported them from Southeast Asia to then disperse them on their forays about the Mediterranean. Oranges gave the farmers and cooks of Spain and elsewhere a new taste treat to play with. Soon they developed many types, the Seville and the Valencia among them, and added orange to many of their culinary delights. Following that tradition is an unusual, but stirring preparation for fish, incorporating both orange and Mediterranean-style sweet wine, with a touch of ancient, woody bay leaf.

19 January, 2009 /

by Dr. Susanna Hoffman

So standard are the selections in our markets, we rarely see some of the hundreds of varieties of citrus fruit that grows about the world. But every now and then, a sample of one of the ancient or very new sorts comes our way. Some are:

Kumquats - are a small citrus fruit, looking rather like orange fingerlings, that grow on a bushy shrub with dark green shiny leaves rather than a tall tree. They originated, were eaten, and admired in China and were unknown in the West until they were brought to England in 1846 by Robert Fortune, a specimen collector for The London Botanical Society. He envisioned them as a landscaping ornamental, not an edible, and that was how they first spread across Europe and to the Americas, as a garden shrub. Their bushiness is useful in creating boundaries and privacy, plus they are pretty and when blossoming, fragrant. They also taste wonderful, raw or cooked like powerful, but tart little oranges. In cooking they soften up. They are only available for short seasons once or twice a year.     

19 January, 2009 /

Telluride chef, Cindy Farney organized a progressive dinner on the San Miguel Valley Floor, on 10 January 2009. TIO's Eileen Burns was on hand to record the Full Moon event, which had participants cross country skiing to various food and drink stations. Check out Eileen's...

12 January, 2009 /

[ click play button to hear]


John-Grape-450wx325h “Panache” is his middle name. A Brit by birth, John Sutcliffe’s wines are as mellifluous as his vowels, which are decidedly upper “U.” (Britspeak for Upper Class.)

John came to the USA in 1968 after serving seven years in the British Army. He graduated Reed College in 1973 before moving to New York City. Once in town, John took a big bite out of the Big Apple by successfully navigating the perilous restaurant world: first he managed the uber hip Maxwell’s Plum, then helped Warner Leroy re-open Tavern on the Green. A series of other high profile eateries followed, including two in Carolina, John’s next address in the States.

29 December, 2008 /