B ut first: Some events to put on your calendar. The chefs from Arroyo Vino, Georgia and the Inn at Loretto will compete in a friendly cookoff this Saturday at the El Dorado Hotel during the Hungry Mouth Festival, a benefit for St. Elizabeth Shelters. The live auction includes a private dinner for 10 with chef Josh Gerwin of Dr. Field Goods. Tickets cost $125.
Temple Grandin, the livestock whisperer, is speaking at the Quivira Conference in Albuquerque on Nov. 9. Tickets for her talk are $25. Registration is separate for the three day conference, which includes a packed schedule of speakers on farming, ranching and conservation.
The Biodynamic Conference takes place the following weekend, Nov. 16-20 in Santa Fe. Full conference registration costs $300 but there are many options for attending individual seminars or days.
Why does every restaurant in Santa Fe seem to offer only meat-and-potatoes entrees? We appear to be in some sort of 1950s rut here. It's all: steak, pork chops, lamb T-bones, duck breasts, chicken breasts blah blah blah. People: It's fall. Get going on the stews, tagines, enchiladas, POT PIES. I can grill a steak in 10 minutes but it'll take a lot longer to slowly simmer a one-pot-wonder.
Chicken pot pie is on the menu at Georgia ($15) and La Plazuela at La Fonda ($16). Where else have you seen it? Let me know!
If you're home and you feel like heating up the house, try The Pioneer Woman's traditional chicken pot pie with little cubes of carrots and pie crust topping. You can totally cheat and use chopped up rotisserie chicken in this one.
But whatever you do, don't try to go all the way back to the frozen chicken pot pies of your youth. In the immortal words of Don Henley, "Don't look back. You can never look back."
I love tarragon, but it's a fight-starter at my house, so I'll leave you with this herbed version of pot pie from Julia and Jacques at Home. Serve this to grown-ups.
I tore this recipe out of The New York Times two weeks ago and it's been sitting on the kitchen counter, tormenting me since then. Julia Moskin makes a basic chicken saute with thigh meat, mushrooms, bacon and Marsala, then throws it into a pie plate with a top crust. Mmmmmm…..feed meeeee.
Ina Garten does a vegetable pot pie with fennel, asparagus, Pernod and saffron. Oh ho! Substitute vegetable stock for the chicken stock and it's meat-free. Use olive oil instead of butter, skip the heavy cream and do a shortening crust (with no egg wash) and it's vegan.
And Santa Fe's own Johnny Vee does one with green chile, apple and chicken.
Ooh, you know what else I'm craving (because it's lunch time and I'm starving)? Cornish pasties. Here's a BBC recipe that requires some translation of weights and temperatures, but looks delightful. Hint: The Brits, for some reason, call rutabegas "swedes." Here's an American recipe, although it calls for vegetable shortening, not lard. WHY ON EARTH would you make a pastry with shortening? Sacrilege. Use animal fat for this. I have a secret stash of beef fat in the fridge that's perfect for this purpose.
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