Micro-Brewery Oven Buffalo or Elk Stew with Bread Toasts
[Editor's Note: In time for the 16th annual Telluride Blues & Brews Festival, this weekend, September 18– 20, anthropologist/cook book author Dr. Susanna Hoffman has come up with a recipe for elk (or other game meat) and brews.]
by Dr. Susanna Hoffman
Denver is Telluride's big sister city today, but back in the days of the wild, wooly West both were prosperous mining towns.
Young Denver was a rich gold-rush city, a way station for many wagon trains and cattle drives, and a merchant capitol where intrepid folks crossing the mountains could stock up on whatever goods they needed. Back then, Denver was relatively small, edging towards half million hardy souls, surrounded by open plains and, just up the road a piece, mountains teeming with game. In young Denver, it was easy to eat buffalo, elk, moose, and pronghorn. Any good butcher had the meats as did some of the finer eating establishments such as El Rancho, The Old Navarre, and the Wiltshire Country Club. I never lost my taste for the game morsels I acquired as a girl and mourned their disappearance from shops and restaurants as more and more people, along with mega-chain grocery stores, invaded my hometown.
