Visit the Colorado Table blog, where Denver Post staffers share recipes, news and ideas about eating in the West.
Benefit to support wildfire responders
The wildfires that raged across Colorado’s Front Range this summer have been brought under control, but the devastation remains.
That’s why EATDenver, an organization representing more than 50 local restaurants, is hosting a “Fight Fire with Flavor” benefit on Sunday Aug. 26. The event will be held at Second Home Kitchen + Bar at 150 Clayton Lane in Cherry Creek. The event runs 4-7 p.m.
Here’s the deal: For $65, you get to sample food from a dozen participating restaurants. There’s an open bar, too. All proceeds go to the Governor’s Colorado Fire Relief Fund, which supports volunteery fire departments, disaster agencies and other organizations that have been saddled with unexpected expenses from the fires.
The lineup of participants is impressive: 1515 Restaurant, Beatrice and Woodsley, Biker Jim’s Gourmet Dogs, Black Pearl, Ignite Gastropub, Lola, Phat Thai, Row 14, Second Home Kitchen, The Coral Room, The Corner Office and Wynkoop Brewing Co.
Tickets are available at .William Porter,
Retro recipe found
A reader asked us via Twitter for the chicken salad recipe from the Denver Dry Goods Tea Room. This recipe appeared in Marty Meitus’ “Recipe Please” column in 2001.
Denver Tea Room’s Pecan Chicken Salad
From chef Fred Batchelor, makes 8 servings.
Ingredients
1 (3-pound) chicken, cooked, skinned, and meat diced
2 ribs diced celery
¼ cup pecans
1 medium red onion, sliced thin, then chopped
1 cup mayonnaise, thinned with ¼ cup water
1 teaspoon seasoned salt or more, to taste
Directions
Combine chicken, celery, pecans and onions. Gradually add enough of the mayonnaise mixture until ingredients are moist and lightly covered. Add seasoned salt.
Bobby Stuckey, somm of the year?
Boulder’s Frasca Food and Wine landed with fountains of fairy dust when it opened its doors in 2004. It didn’t take long — maybe minutes? — for the place to race to the top of Colorado best-restaurant heap. The space enchanted, the service inspired, the food wowed, and the wine sang.
Frasca partner Bobby Stuckey, one of fewer than 120 master sommeliers in North America, built the wine program, and that toil has delivered more than just wallet-opening vino fanatics at Frasca’s tables every night; it won Stuckey and Frasca multiple wine awards over the years.
And here comes another garland: Stuckey is one of five finalists for the magazine Wine Enthusiasts’s “Sommelier of the Year” award. The magazine has held its Wine Star awards for 13 years, but 2012 marks the first time for the sommelier category.
The rest of the finalists call New York City or Northern California home.
Douglas Brown,
