MEITUS: Enjoying wages of 7 deadly sins

By Marty Meitus, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Having been out and about the past few weeks enjoying myself (passing the time until my kid gets home from college this week), I attended a number of food-related events. Here's what's happening:

* Lately a whole lot of Denver chefs have been cooking at the James Beard House in New York, a prestigious, albeit costly, honor. The chefs must supply staff, food, transportation and lodging at their own expense. Nevertheless, no one would turn down the opportunity. It would be like being asked to cook for visiting heads of state. What do you say? "Sorry, I can't make it, too expensive; thanks anyway"?

To stand out from the crowd, Thanawat Bates, executive sous chef of the Palace Arms restaurant at the Brown Palace Hotel, planned an unusual menu. He cooked up a dinner called Seven - An Evening of Culinary Sin, which I previewed ahead of the event. Each course represented one of the seven deadly sins, and even though the "sins" were somewhat of a stretch, the food was divine.

Truthfully, I had low expectations because the menu included some odd things such as scorpio, a fish that apparently has "angry" spikes - representing wrath - and sauteed abalone, truffle potato puree and sea urchin with a shallot sherry vinaigrette - representing greed. Not sure what the connection is there, but somehow it all worked.

The seven deadly sins would be a really fun idea for a dinner party. My idea of greed is hogging the whole bag of Cheetos, so I'm putting any dinner guests on notice.

* The Junior League of Denver announced plans to publish its fifth cookbook. Colorado Classique will arrive in June 2009 with a focus on updated classics, nutritional info and color photos. All the Junior League cookbooks have alliterative titles with C's: Colorado Cache, Creme de Colorado, Colorado Collage, Colorado Colore.

This time around they considered abandoning the theme. But, said cookbook chairwoman Stephanie Duncan, Classique hit the right note. "We wanted a name that could stand alone, since everyone calls them Cache, Colore, Creme and Collage." They announced the name at a kickoff party at Crate & Barrel in Cherry Creek North, where they were also celebrating an updated 30th anniversary edition of Cache, the league's million-selling cookbook.

* Calendula is the 2008 International Herb of the Year, a surprise to probably everyone who thinks of herbs as, you know, herbs. Calendula looks like a flower; it's also called pot marigold, not to be confused with regular marigolds. Nevertheless, Denver Botanic Gardens Guild members will be on hand to tell how to cook with it at the Denver Botanic Gardens' Plant Sale, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. Info: botanicgardens.org.

* Tyler Wiard of Elway's squared off against Jennifer Jasinski of Rioja and Bistro Vendome at one of those Iron Chef cook-offs at the Colorado Women's Expo. Before the event (I was one of the judges), I looked at the ingredients and wondered what I always wonder: How the heck do you make sense out of so many ingredients in an hour? The mystery ingredient was Colorado lamb.

Wiard won, but I picked up this little nugget for the home cook: Jasinski took a huge mushroom, cut a thin vertical slice, then breaded it in panko crumbs, fried it and served it atop a salad.

Marty Meitus is the Food editor. 303-954-5220 or meitusm@RockyMountainNews.com