Oh! There's so much happening this week you'll hardly recognize the city. We are awakening from our winter slumber with a slew of fun foodie events.
First, a couple of events you may have read about last week if you ever read the New Mexican, which we know you never, ever do, right? (Humor us here, OK?) At noon Thursday, March 16, James Beard Award-winning cookbook author Anya von Bremzen will visit Santa Fe for a signing and chat at The Spanish Table (109 N. Guadalupe St., 986-0243). Bremzen is a Russian-born, New York City-based cook who spends half the year living and traveling in Spain, a place she calls "the capital of exciting food." Her new book,
The Spanish Table
(Workman Artisan, paperback, $22.95), is a full-color, 500-page must-have not just for lovers of Spanish food, but for anyone who loves to cook simply with bright, clean flavors.
"Spanish cuisine is very minimalist," the author told me last week when we spoke, she from New York and I from the comfort of my dining room. "It's about combining three or four ingredients…to make the maximum impact with the minimum of effort." Recipes like chicken and apples braised in hard cider;
mesclun
salad with figs,
cabrales
and pomegranate; and eggplant ham and cheese sandwiches may technically have more than three or four ingredients, but not that many more. And they do come together quickly.
But von Bremzen really won me over when she said, "Spanish food has a way of making you taste an ingredient for the first time." I recalled that some of the best dishes I've ever eaten had made me feel that same way, thinking things to myself like, "Kale! Who knew it could taste so good?" Luckily, the recipes really are manageable for the average home cook. As the author said, "It's all about making one ingredient really stand out, so we can spend less time in the kitchen. Simplicity doesn't have to be boring."
Thursday night, following the book signing, there will be a dinner at El Farol (4-10 pm, 808 Canyon Road, 983-9912), featuring recipes from the book. Tickets to the dinner cost $75 and include a copy of the book. The menu will include Manchego crackers with Marcona almonds, tangerine marinated olives, Andalusian fried fish, almond gazpacho with figs Campari and blood orange
granita
, grilled lamb chops with
piquillo
pepper marmalade and creamy Basque smoked cheese risotto; and blue cheese ice cream with pears. Call El Farol for reservations.
This Friday, March 17, at 6 pm, Las Cosas Cooking School (in DeVargas Mall, 988-3394) is offering a superfoods cooking class. Remember, I wrote about superfoods a few weeks ago? Well here's your chance to put theory into practice. For $65, they'll show you how to do wonders with lentils, blueberries, broccoli, kale, nuts, salmon, oats, soy, tomatoes and pomegranates in recipes like blue corn blueberry muffins, curry lentil soup with herb yogurt, nut crusted baked salmon with garlic greens and confit of tomatoes and olive oil cake with orange lavender syrup. Call Las Cosas to register.
And while we're back on the topic of superfoods, I must tell you that Wild Oats (1090 S. St. Francis Drive, 983-5333) sells a nifty little
Superfoods Healthy Eating Program Guide
for $1. It contains information about the ingredients, plus meal plans and recipes to keep you superfooding it for a whole month. Check it out next time you're there buying pomegranate juice and tofu-topped pizza.
Also this week, Outside Magazine contributor Steven Rinella will read from his new book
The Scavenger's Guide To Haute Cuisine
(Miramax Books, hardcover, $23.95). Now, the word "scavenger" in that title is a bit misleading. I have a friend who lives out on Taos mesa and literally scavenges. I mean the guy will eat almost anything-once. He told me a few years ago that he'd just finished eating a coyote he saw get hit by a car out on Highway 64.
Anyway, back from that tangent: Rinella has actually done something far more interesting than eating one roadkill coyote. An avid hunter and fisherman, this cute young guy (and a bunch of his wacky hipster bros) set out on a year-long journey to hunt and gather all of the ingredients he would need in order to recreate a feast from Escoffier's 1903 book
Le Guide Culinaire
, one of the sacred texts of fancypants cooking written by one of our most holy prophets.
The Scavenger's Guide
chronicles Rinella's adventures as he travels all over North America, hunting hulking elk and raising pigeons, snagging stingrays, eel and turtles, all in the name of this 45-course feast he plans to put on at the end, a meal that involves every imaginable part of these animals.
Here's a short passage from the book that should serve to entice the most food-obsessed among you: "I suppose it's important to clear that up right away-that I think it's exciting to hunt and fish. People will happily pay good money for dead animals, so long as the animals are killed by proxy executioners and sold in grocery stores. But many of those same people are suspicious of folks who enjoy killing their own food in the wild." Oh the irony! Escoffier would have been deadly suspicious of anyone who didn't supervise the slaughter of his dinner. I can tell I'm going to love this book. The reading happens Tuesday at 6 pm at Garcia Street Books (376 Garcia St., 986-0151) and will be followed by a reception.
Tell me where to eat! I need your input. Send all of your tips, gripes and raves to food@sfreporter.com.
