Ribs, pumpkin, bacon, apples, lamb shanks, potatoes. It’s autumn and meat-and-potatoes dining is more popular than ever.
Not that a good steak and a baked potato would ever be turned away in meat-centric Colorado, but the cold weather only ups our desire for the homey, hearty flavors of fall. And well … mostly, that means meat.
“We’re moving from veggies to meat,” said chef-owner Aaron Seitz of College Drive Café. “I went through a lot of spinach, kale, zucchini, and now I’m cooking more with pork.”
But at a café known for its scrumptious breakfasts, Seitz concedes it is not like the pig is ever out of fashion.
Still, even in restaurants where the menu stays basically the same, local chefs are moved to throw in a dish or two that reflects the season. Many of the offerings at the Palace Restaurant remain constant, but owner and chef Paul Gelose can’t resist creating an entree that harkens back to his days in Switzerland.
He simmers a cut of beef similar to a small strip streak in white wine, adds mushrooms, a touch of spinach and finishes with a demi-glace cream sauce. Then he pours it over pasta. Who wouldn’t want that on a chilly evening? (It must be noted that like pork, a tasty cream sauce will always be in style.)
So what is it about cold weather that sends us seeking heavier foods like winter squashes and long braised meats? As the days get cooler, our bodies burn more calories to keep warm, leading us toward comfort foods.
“Your body craves those deeper flavors,” said Cynthia James Stewart, chef and owner of the Harvest Grill. “The foods you want are heartier and richer to keep you warm inside.”
But if you just simply yearn for the savory pumpkin-sausage soup she makes from her sister Jennifer’s vegetables and her brother Dan’s pork, no one would blame you. Or maybe you’re in a hurry to try Stewart’s sloppy James Joes, filled with the last of the sweet peppers – no one would fault you for that, either.
Stewart dedicates her menu to strictly local, seasonal foods. If she can’t get it from her family’s farm or another one nearby, she won’t use it. She limits her menu, which is short and take-out only, to the meats and vegetables that are produced in the Four Corners, believing that’s the healthiest way to eat.
This time of year, she also cuts back on her hours from daily to Saturday only, a nod not just to the farmer’s season, but to the tourist’s as well.
We foodies are soon to be out of fresh local vegetables until spring, with the Durango Farmers Market closing Oct. 25, a mere two weekends away. But you can stock up on fall produce, because most of it stores quite well. Root vegetables abound, and local farmers will give us our fill of winter squashes, potatoes, beets, carrots, turnips and onions.
A little lettuce, some kale and spinach might remain, and if we’re really lucky, some late-harvest tomatoes and eggplant, but don’t hold your breath. Meanwhile, now that frosts and freezes have started, fall vegetables will be at their finest.
“Carrots get so sweet when it’s cold outside,” said Emily Jensen of Homegrown Farm, just past Bayfield. “There are some benefits to this really short growing season.”
And Durango chefs know it, larding in all the local produce they can and preserving it for winter’s dark days. They roast tomatoes, freeze delicate herbs like basil in pesto, dry mushrooms and fill their cold storages with hardy specimens like pumpkins and potatoes.
Expect to see a lot of winter squash – a northern Italian favorite – on the menu at Guido’s Favorite Foods. Think butternut squash ravioli and pumpkin gelato. But look, too, for super savory meat dishes like braised oxtail and pork-based pasta entrees.
And mushrooms – chef/owner Susan Devereaux loves them and forages for them in our neck of the woods, bringing in chanterelles and porcinis to flavor her fall dishes, stuffing them in lasagna, loading them into risotto.
But the surest sign for Devereaux that fall is here isn’t the pumpkins or the pork or the porcini. It’s the vino – summer’s whites put aside for fall’s full-flavored reds, from Barolos to Brunellos to Barbarescos.
All of which, by the way, go fabulously with meat and will likely end up in a long-simmered sauce for your beef or lamb. (Wine used to be what to drink; how nice it’s now what to eat, too.)
While ingredients change with the seasons – Brussel sprouts instead of zucchini, cauliflower rather than eggplant – cooking methods change, too. Seasons Rotisserie and Grill executive chef Dave Stewart considers the more intensive techniques as important as an ingredient.
“The process is more involved,” he said. “It draws us in as cooks.”
Instead of quickly searing steak on the grill, he’ll braise short ribs in red wine all afternoon and serve them with horseradish mashed potatoes. He’ll trade shavings of sweet onion over a salad for an earthy onion soup based on slow-cooked beef bones. He’ll switch simply prepared lamb chops for shanks braised lovingly in red wine with root vegetables and oven-roasted garlic.
Ore House chef Cliff Bornheim follows similar methods, saying it helps him make the transition from summer’s bright flavors to fall’s deeper tones. But did we mention apples, one of autumn’s finest treasures? Bornheim reduces apple cider to a glaze and pours it over roasted winter squash topped with blackened walleye (even seafood gets the cold-weather treatment at the steak house.)
He jestingly calls his warm spinach salad with bacon an American classic – “it’s from the ’70s” – and hails it for its darker flavors, the better to go with, well, steak. And like Seitz before him, Bornheim praises pork as a winner in any season.
“People love bacon,” he said simply.
It’s fall all right – so out with salad, in with soup. Pull out your coats, haul up the Dutch oven. Throw in the pumpkins and potatoes, the onions and carrots, the cabbage and spinach. Celebrate the last of the season’s glory. Just don’t forget the meat.
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