Aspen – There are a lot of challenges to attending the Food & Wine Classic.
You’ve got to plan your schedule very carefully, to make sure you don’t miss Thomas Keller preparing a Lamb Ribeye Pot au Feu while you’re busy watching Mario Batali making barley risotto with porcini mushrooms.
You’ve got to prioritize between the 25-year retrospective tasting of Chateau Montelena Estate Cabernets and the Tour de Bordeaux seminar led by celeb-sommelier Andrea Immer Robinson.
You have to balance your your plate of pig cheeks on top of your glass of champagne so you can shake hands with Jacques Pépin.
And you’ve got to decide whether to have yet another sliver of jamón ibérico shaved by José Andrés, or whether you should save your appetite for one of Masaharu Morimoto’s hamachi sandwiches.
But the hardest thing of all, at least for me, was maintaining composure in the presence of my heroes.
Among all the free-flowing wine and nonstop passed party hors d’oeuvres at last weekend’s food fest, I met three of my heroes, and each one made me a little weak in the knees.
One of them was Suzanne Goin, the celebrated Los Angeles chef/owner of A.O.C. and Lucques restaurants. Her 2005 cookbook, “Sunday Suppers at Lucques,” is perhaps my favorite cookbook of the past few years, and certainly the one I’ve used the most.
I spotted her while wandering around the Food & Wine exhibitors’ tents, and after hemming and hawing and circling her for several minutes, I gathered my nerve and said hello. Actually, I think what I blurted out was “Hi! I love your herbed pork roast recipe!”
Gracious and composed, she handled my blubbering with a few kind words, and I walked on air for the rest of the afternoon.
Another was Danny Meyer, the groundbreaking restaurateur whose New York restaurants (which include Eleven Madison Park, Gramercy Tavern and Shake Shack) rank among my favorites on the planet. I managed to nervously drop the names of a couple of people we know in common, but by the end of our conversation he’d made me feel like we, too, were old friends.
I was most excited about meeting April Bloomfield, one of this year’s Food & Wine best new chefs and a cook whose food I know well. Her New York restaurant, the Spotted Pig, opened right around the corner from my apartment a couple of years before I left New York, and I often found myself at the bar there on weekend afternoons sipping pints of bitter beer and scarfing bowls of gnudi with crispy sage.
Bloomfield, a crackerjack young cook who decided on culinary school because she was late getting her application into the police academy, was smart, philosophical and funny when we chatted. I asked her how she liked all the attention she’s been getting lately as the it-girl of gastro-pub cooking, and how she’s handling the pressures of her nascent food-fame.
“It’s flattering,” she said. “But it’s not about all that. It’s about the food. At the end of the day, I’m going back in the kitchen.”
Which reminded me. Oh yeah, all this hubbub surrounding the Food & Wine Classic is just that, hubbub.
It’s really about the food.
Dining critic Tucker Shaw can be reached at 303-954-1958 or at dining@denverpost.com.
RECIPE
Sangria
This wine-based cocktail was dining critic Tucker Shaw’s favorite drink at the Aspen Food & Wine Classic. From Geoffrey Zakarian, this recipes makes 8 8-ounce servings.
Ingredients
1 bottle white wine (750 ml)
6 ounces Cointreau
2 ounces Remy Martin V.S.O.P
6 ounces fresh squeezed orange juice
Lemon-lime soda as needed
2 lemons, cut into thin wedges
1 cup strawberries, sliced
1 apple, sliced
2 oranges, cut into thin wedges
1 peach, sliced
1 cup fresh pineapple, cubed
Directions
Place wine, Cointreau, Remy Martin and orange juice into a large glass container, cover and refrigerate overnight.
When ready to serve, pour into ice-filled pitcher until 2/3 full.
Add freshly sliced fruits and top with lemon- lime soda, stir gently to mix.
