I’m reading Spoon Fed, the memoir by the New York Times food editor, Kim Severson. I just finished the part where she is writing an article on Alice Waters, the famed head of Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, CA. The two shop at a green market in New York City (farmer’s market to us here in Colorado) and then go to Kim’s home to prepare a luncheon and do the interview. This gave me an idea.
This Friday, a dear friend arrives for the weekend and---- since she loves food as much as I do----our plan is to eat our way through Denver, hitting as many GF restaurants as we can in 36 hours. Sounds formidable, doesn’t it! We have lots of choices here in Denver, so the problem is narrowing them down to just a few. For example, we’ll go to Fruition (which I just visited this past weekend) and found many gluten-free choices on the menu and a waiter who was very comfortable with a gluten-free diner. The Flourless Chocolate Cake was the best, complete with Caramel Sauce, garnished with bits of peanut brittle. You may have read about the chef, Alex Seidel, in Food & Wine magazine since he was one of the magazines Best New Chefs in 2010.
And, we’ll definitely have brunch at Elise Wiggins’ Panzano at the Hotel Monaco. This is one of my most favorite restaurants in Denver and I know we’ll have GF bread, plus lots of delectable choices. I’m still pondering which other restaurants we’ll hit, although we’ll have breakfast at my home (Chez Carol), with two quick breads from my just-released new book, 100 Best Gluten-Free: Cranberry-Orange Scones with Orange Glaze one morning and probably Chocolate Chip Muffins with White Chocolate Drizzle another morning, along with GF granola from the same book. I love baking for GF guests, since we so seldom get to eat baked goods when traveling.
This eating-extravaganza through Denver will be so much fun, but here is the idea I got from Spoon Fed. My guest and I could go to a nearby Farmer’s Market and buy whatever is freshest and cook something together in my kitchen for lunch. For example, we might do a Farmer’s Market Soup (if you’re a subscriber, see the GfreeCuisine.com menu for the recipe). If our famous Colorado peaches are ready, we may make Herb Grilled Chicken with Peach Relish, also from GfreeCuisine.com. Or, if we simply want to eat lightly, we might buy fresh beets and make a beet-orange salad with breaded goat cheese rounds (Kim says that Alice Waters started the goat-cheese-round craze way back when…..) The recipe for these rounds appears later in August in GfreeCuisine.com.
I’ll let you know how our eating-extravaganza goes. In the meantime, if you want to make your own version of the Flourless Chocolate Cake, look for the recipe at GfreeCuisine.com or in any of my other cookbooks, including the new 100 Best Gluten-Free Recipes. It is super-simple. The Homemade Dairy-free Caramel Sauce was a dessert “special” at GfreeCuisine.com a few weeks ago. You can find a peanut brittle recipe in many standard cookbooks.
There is something really satisfying about the joy of cooking with someone you like and who also enjoys cooking. So get in the kitchen, start cooking, and let me know how it turns out.
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