Edible San Juan Mountains

roasting in thin airBaking at HigH altitude Homemade jerky (it's easy)

feed figHt - grass vs. grain tHe tea tHerapist

edibletraversing the san juans to bring you the story of local food, season by season.

mountainssan juan

no. 11 Winter 2012/2013

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4rise and knead

and sHineBaking at altitude.

by michelle king

10fresH Winter

foodby d. dion

7drying it out

Making jerky right in your kitchenby jess kelley

12against paleoIf loving bread is wrong,I don't want to be right.

by emily klein

13WHere is our

food security ?by mike nolan

14tHe mountain roaster

Coffee, and the mystery of the roast.by rachel turiel

20Hut cuisine

Going gourmet in the backcountryby anna riling

24of grass & grain &

tHe steak on your plate

by laura Thomas

29tHe tea tHerapist

An Edible interview with the White Dragon Tea Room's Michael Thunder

2puBlisHer's letter

contents

puBlisHer’s letter

rick scibelli, jr., Edible San Juan Mountains

every time we put together this magazine i learn something. like how to make a pickle from a cucumber (fall 2010). or how to start a compost pile (summer 2012). i tried once, but my neighbor complained of mice. i didn’t have the heart to tell him that if any-thing was attracting rodents it might be the mysterious newspaper collection he had overflowing like a papery glacier from his one car garage.

i always assumed that green tea came from the green tea tree. and black tea? The black tea tree. not true. all tea comes from the same tree. i am certain this tidbit was covered in ms. alkire’s fifth grade class but i was far too busy flying in formation with the geese i could see out the window traveling across the iron-gray horizon. sweet free-dom.

i have a confession. i am not a foodie. as a result it’s not a far distance to travel in the culinary world before i discover something that was previously unknown to me. like when you make burgers ... you shouldn’t spend a lot of time flattening the ground beef into the perfect shape (fall 2010). it should be formed gently with minimal handling. so now i no longer beat the crap out of my patty and my burgers are better.

But i want to be a foodie. i want to really appreciate the subtle nu-ance of a finally roasted single sourced coffee (page 14). i want to say, ‘this has an excellent bouquet’ and know what the hell i am talking about. i love coffee. But folks, i would by lying if i said i really appre-ciated the apparent complexity of coffee. or wine. or tea. or grass fed beef. or Bach. or faulkner.

don’t get me wrong. i love all of the above. a new york strip with a solid cabernet ... that is happiness. a creamy latte ? it is the nector of the gods. a cask-pulled bitter? mother’s milk. But i have had this nagging feeling that i really don’t get it. really i don’t appreciate these things with any more depth than my dogs appreciate table scraps over kibble. it makes them happy as hell. coffee makes me happy as hell. But there is an underbelly to all of these things that asks for patience, presence and a fondness for the details. all traits that i (and my dogs) don’t possess.

These people are out there. matt lauer from fahrenheit coffee un-derstands the nuance of coffee better than i understand the nuances of my own cowlicks. He is a student of the seed (another tidbit, cof-fee is a seed, not a bean). He takes it to an art form. and so does the tea master, michael Thunder at White dragon tearoom in durango (page 29). one sip of his tea takes him on a journey. i love tea. But i

don’t taste what he tastes. i asked him to teach me to really taste tea.He steeped The Breath of the goddess at the perfect temperature

for the perfect amount of time (“steep too long and the tannins leach out”) then poured us both a small cup. He took a large sip. His eyes closed. He took a deep breath. Heaven, he said. to him, the cosmic energy in the leaves, hold bliss. He said this. i believe him. i wanted to taste what he was tasting – to travel where he traveled in that brief moment. to taste even a hint of bliss. i closed my eyes. i took a big sip. Breathed in. Breathed out. and then i tasted, well, something very similar to tea.

maybe it’s something you are born with. an affinity for distinc-tion (or is it a propensity for obsession?). The faculty that makes one wake up every morning and like an ancient ritual steeped deep in their dna, pour their favorite beans with their favorite roast pro-file (for winter of course) into their burr grinder (not blade grinder. Blade grinders cut the beans inconsistently as you will learn. i don’t have a burr grinder. i don’t have a grinder.) and pulse for the exact prescribed time that they have predetermined from trial and error (9 seconds makes a far richer cup that 8 seconds they have discov-ered). They bring the water to a degree below boiling. poor the water over the grinds, let it steep (2 minutes 22 seconds because they have determined after many mornings that this is the sweet spot for this particular grind, seed and roast). sip and taste everything. The carda-mom. The rose. The source country. The mountain it was grown on. meanwhile i scoop the grounds into the press, boil the water, fill the press, press the press and slam the coffee – noting no notes with the exception of the overall lovely and familiar coffeeness of the coffee. like a dog with a bone.

to find so much meaning in a cup of coffee ... so much depth in a cup of tea ... so many adjectives in a glass of wine (summer 2012) is a luxury. isn’t it a luxury we can all allow to afford ourselves? is it only a matter of slowing down and taking the time and getting present? or is it a matter of faculty? of dna?

i would like to learn to delve into the layers of my culinary expe-riences. i want to taste the bliss – maybe for no reason other than it would require my full attention. and that could be sweet freedom.

2 edible san juan mountains Winter 2012/2013

on tHe cover (sort of ):Yes, Alyssa Rodriguez is not on the

cover. But she works with Mick Hill (on the cover, right) and Doug Jones, left, at Tomboy Coffee Roasters in Telluride. Rodriguez recently joined the long-serving team of Hill and Jones at Tomboy as their first official barista, where she now carefully crafts the coffee drinks. Before Rodriguez, the Telluride-based coffee roaster didn't make coffee, it just perfected the ingre-dient needed to make coffee.

"They told me I had to hire her," Tomboy owner Mick Hill said. "They said she is the best in town."

Rodriguez, a recent transplant to Telluride from the island of Kauai, is confident but won't lay claim to her reputation. She is a student of the craft. Or is it art? Either way, she can tell you the history of the drink she is carefully making you.

The day this picture was taken it was slow. It was only the second week of the new venture. "I think things will pick up," she said, "once they learn I am here."

– Rick Scibelli, Jr.

editor and puBlisHerrick scibelli, jr.

[email protected]

copy editorchris Brussat

staff Writersanna rilingrachel turiellaura Thomas

jess kelley

contriButing Writersd. dion

michelle kingemily kleinmike nolan

pHotograpHy and designrick scibelli, jr.

director of marketinglaura Thomas

[email protected] 946 7475

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no part of this publication may be used without written permission of the publisher. © 2012.

every effort is made to avoid errors, misspellings and omissions. if, however, an error comes to

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edibles a n j u a n m o u n ta i n s

3

in tHe kitcHen

rise and knead and sHine

it’s that time of year again: frigid temperatures, endless shovel-ing, powder days. all that cheesecake and stuffing is justified by all the shivering and skiing. comfort food is on, and nothing says com-fort like coming home to the smell of freshly baked bread.

Before you ask meemaw back home for her bread recipes, keep in mind you aren’t in kansas any more. altitude is your biggest en-emy in the san juans. The same thin air that makes you gasp for breath on the skin up deer creek does the same to that workhorse of the bread world: yeast. consequently, you will need more yeast bodies to do the work. But, due to decreased air pressure, gases ex-pand faster at high altitude. ironically, you will have to handicap the process, or it will rise too fast and fall, creating a brick suitable only for self-defense. The lower boiling point of water, lack of mois-ture, and the alignment of the stars also come into play, so read your horoscope.

some simple adjustments can prevent that potential projectile. try reducing the amount of sugar, increasing the liquids, or baking at a higher temperature (see below). any or all of these factors could come into play, so trial and error is a given.

Baking yeast bread does require some forethought, although there are ways to prep ready-to-bake loaves that can be stored for a month or so. alternatively, you could resurrect the bread machine from the annals of food-fad history: throw in some flour, push a but-ton, and claim the credit.

for me, that’s cheating. i crave a thin-crusted creature that i have nursed to the peak of its rise, then beaten into submission on the kitchen counter. i want war stripes of flour all over my face.

unless you don’t mind spending half a day baking every time you run out of bread, you must learn to be efficient. simply double a

recipe, bake one loaf and freeze the other in plastic wrap or wax paper. you can also bake both and freeze one loaf for up to two months, but be prepared for a slightly drier loaf – nothing a little extra butter won’t fix (isn’t there a driveway that needs shoveling?).

your flour war stripes are coming along nicely when suddenly the sun comes out and beckons you to play. put the dough in a light-ly oiled bowl with a plate and heavy object on top and place in the fridge. This makes it rise at a snail’s pace. The next morning, take out the dough and set it on a flat, oiled surface and let it come to room temperature. Then let it rise a second time and continue with the process.

and as chunks of snow and ice pelt down on you while sitting at the last damp belay of the stairway to Heaven, warmth will course through your veins as you smile and groan, “Bread....” you did your prep work: a loaf is thawing at home and the oven is on auto-preheat.

HIGH-ALTITUDE BAKING TIPS 1. put rack in center of oven and bake bread at 425° for 15 min-

utes, then at 350° for 20 minutes. 2.give it 3 rises: punch down just before it doubles in size for

first and second rise (about 45 minutes).Then let it rise in pan only for 15-20 minutes before baking.

3. put a roasting pan full of water in the bottom of the oven to keep the loaf moist or toss in ice cubes throughout the baking time.

4. decrease sugar by up to 2 tablespoons per cup. 5. increase liquids by adding 2 to 4 tablespoons per cup. 6. go by feel: dough should be elastic and smooth, not sticky.

keep adding flour as you knead, to bring it to the right feel.

by Michelle King


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drying it outwhy buy when you can dry

by jess Kelley

Lime and thyme trout jerky.

the concept of drying meat as a means of preservation was first introduced to me in a laura ingalls Wilder book decades ago, and i remember reading and thinking: gross. How could that work without smelling totally rank and making you puke if you ate it? little did i know – and the ingallses clearly did – that preserving harvested and hunted food for later consumption is one of the oldest practical arts employed by mankind. dried meat has sustained humans since as early as 1000 Bc because of its stability and portability.

i mean, how else did people stockpile food to eat during long, snowy winters? ah ha.

When you dry meat, as our ancestors did in the hot sun or over open flames (and how we can today with dehydrators), the moisture is removed. Without moisture, microorganisms and bacteria cannot thrive, thereby postponing the spoilage date. it’s a pretty basic con-cept; think “grape becomes raisin.” in addition to drying, salt was and is used as a complimentary dehydrating agent and a preservative, particularly useful for fish and meat.

now, flash forward to the gas station jerky with its signature rock-et-high sodium content. today’s packaged jerky – some containing ingredients like conventionally raised beef, msg, nitrates and arti-ficial flavors – is, i realized, substantially more disgusting than what our forefathers feasted on. so, in search of a healthy snack and in true back-to-mother-earth-screw-corporate-food-production spirit, i decided to try making jerky on my own. now, where the heck is pa when you need him?

turns out, i didn’t need pa. diy jerky is actually so easy and tasty i’m a little embarrassed at how squirrelly i was with the concept. for hunters, or those who buy a whole steer every fall and by march are ready to feed the rest to their dogs, or those looking to make an af-fordable healthy snack, jerky is a language you need to learn. all you need is the meat or fish, some sauces and spices, a mixing bowl and a dehydrator ($70-$260 online) or your oven. if you’re a foodie, invest-ing in the dehydrator is well worth it, because you can also dry herbs, fruits, and vegetables, make tortillas or fruit leathers, etc. The party

really never ends. The meat or fish needs to be cured at a low temperature (my de-

hydrator goes to a maximum of 145° f) for a long time – from 4 to 8 hours. you can use your oven set at the lowest temperature, but note that this method generally requires much less cooking time as the meat will generally dry faster. The actual drying process happens after the uniform slices of meat (everything shrinks, so pieces should be

AsiAn style Beef Jerky inGreDients

½ cup apple cider vinegar

¼ cup coconut aminos (or soy sauce)

½ tablespoon minced fresh ginger

1 tablespoon minced fresh garlic

2 teaspoons sesame seeds

2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil

Black pepper optional

1.5 pounds James ranch Beef Diamond Cut rump roast

MetHOD

Whisk together the vinegar, aminos, ginger, garlic, sesame seeds, and sesame oil in a mixing bowl. slice roast into thin strips (¼ to ½ inch thick), cover with marinade, and let sit overnight, or up to two days. Place onto dehydrator trays and cook for 6 hours at 140° f, or in the oven at the lowest temperature possible (check after 2 hours if in the oven). store in an airtight container for up to one month.

liMe tHyMe trOut JerkyinGreDients2 trout fillets (available year round at sunnyside farms Market in

Durango)

2 tablespoons minced fresh or dried thyme

2 tablespoons red pepper

1 cup lime juice

¼ cup lemon juice

salt and pepper

MetHOD

De-skin the trout by placing it fillet down and peeling back the skin. slice into strips approximately ½ inch thick. in a mixing bowl, stir together thyme, red pepper, lime and lemon juice. Add the trout, salt and pepper. let marinate overnight. the acidity from the citrus juice will begin to cook the fish, ceviche style. Place on dehydrator trays and dry at 145° f for 4 hours or until fish is no longer tender to the touch.

cut twice as large as your final desired size) have soaked in marinade overnight or longer. so sure, it’s a somewhat time-consuming process, but well worth it. Whether you like spicy or BBQ flavor, the sky is the limit when it comes to customizing flavor profiles, the economic benefit is considerable, and you’ll surely evoke jealous looks when you bust out a bag of your homemade goods in the backcountry, or while passing someone on your sleigh.

Asian style beef jerky.


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fresh winter food

eric eckert, owner and executive chef at flavor restaurant in tel-luride, sprinkles a handful of tiny plants across the wooden table. They are less than an inch long and are vibrantly colored, from maroon to char-treuse to olive. These micro-greens, he explains, are the earliest shoots from plants that you would only recognize when full grown: kale, radish, wasa-bi, basil, celery, onion. These tender young plants are at their most potent and flavorful in this form and he uses the pungent micro-greens to garnish dishes and add zest to salads.

eckert’s tireless pursuit of unusual, fresh ingredients was inspired by the Brennans, an upscale restaurant group in new orleans where he used

by d. dion

Back of tHe House

to work. The Brennans had their own farm to grow all of their specialty produce, and when eckert opened flavor in early 2012, he started cultivat-ing his own sources for fresh, organic farm-to-table ingredients. despite being open every day for breakfast, lunch and dinner, eckert managed to also maintain a table at the weekly telluride farmers market. He wasn’t just trying to sell food, he was also trying to build relationships with lo-cal growers. “We would see what the vendors had to offer on friday, use some at our farmers market booth and integrate the rest into the weekend menu.”

There is no magic trick to finding fresh, local and regional produce in

Flavor's Eric Eckert.

With the help of hydroponics, a paradigm shifts


colorado in the summer. in the winter, it’s another story. our win-ter climate lends itself better to skiing than to sowing vegetables, but with a little ingenuity and effort, it is still possible to grow in the win-ter. enter telluride Hydroponics, a retailer and wholesaler of horti-culture supplies that does contract growing for restaurants like flavor. “With indoor hydroponic growing in the winter, we are going to have some of the more delicate greens that are not usually available in the wintertime,” says eckert. “keep it local and keep it fresh.”

indoor hydroponic growing has a certain stigma; generally, most people associate it with marijuana. That’s too bad, says scotty abra-hams, owner of telluride Hydroponics, because growing food this way means restaurants and people can buy fresh food locally, instead of getting it shipped from california. “That particular industry [mari-juana] happens to get the most attention. We just try to make people better growers, no matter what they’re growing. We’ve got a lot of food clients out there and there’s plenty of demand for hydroponic produce.”

abrahams doesn’t just make people more prolific growers, he

gives them the tools to grow organic food in an ecologically sustain-able way. His systems use low-energy, high-output lights that run cool. The plants are grown in coco Husk, a renewable resource that doesn’t have any ground-borne pathogens. perhaps most importantly, telluride Hydroponics manufactures its own fertilizer/plant food and compost, which are organic. “We locally manufacture all of the [plant] food that we feed the food that we eat. you have to grow or-ganic before you can eat organic,” says abrahams.

it’s not that abrahams has anything against trucks, or people who want to buy produce that is shipped from warmer climes. But indoor growing is an easy process, and most of his business at telluride Hy-droponics is teaching people how to do it themselves, and equipping them so that they can. The main difference between the produce that people like eric at flavor can buy from a large supplier from some-where else or from a local grower is that the local produce lasts longer. “i can deliver a living plant. it lasts longer, it’s organic and it’s locally grown,” says abrahams. “We can out-compete california.”

Jenny Boehm readies the patio at Flavor.

11

Bread is at the heart of some of my earliest and fondest mem-ories. as a child transplanted from the lush woods of north carolina to the concrete blandness of a london suburb, morning walks to a local bakery with my dad provided a much-needed sense of wonder. i loved the warm spectacle of tall, golden loaves, crusty rolls and col-orful cakes lining the shelves, and developed a passion for an oddly cylindrical whole-wheat bread. toasted and slathered with butter, its crisp exterior and chewy, pleasantly gritty crumb were a simple but transcendent pleasure. Bread isn't the only food with the power to send me into fits of proustian ecstasy: so, too, can a luxuriously flaky pie crust; a cold, cloudy glass of german beer; or a provençal chick-pea pancake, oily and crackling with char from a wood-fired oven. although the foods that spark my most ardent memories span time, culture and geography, they have one thing in common: they are all forbidden under the paleo diet.

The paleo diet posits that the foods eaten by our hunter-gatherer ancestors are still the optimal ones for health and longevity. ten thousand years, so the theory goes, is not adequate time for our bod-ies to adjust to the grains and legumes introduced with the advent of agriculture. But the ability to adapt and to change is an essential human trait. according to a group of researchers, including the ge-neticist robert moyzis of the university of california at irvine and the anthropologist john Hawks of the university of Wisconsin at madison, a growing body of evidence suggests that our evolution has actually accelerated since the introduction of farming. and, ac-cording to a study published in the public library of science jour-

nal Computational Biology in 2009, lactase persistence – the ability to digest the proteins in milk – emerged in euro-pean populations as recently as 7,500 years ago, long after the first humans began to cultivate grains.

like many others before it, the paleo diet promises its followers a foolproof formula for optimal health in a world where unfettered access to high-calorie processed foods is a greater threat to our well-be-ing than a lack of nutrition. as evidenced by the diversity and profusion of "miraculous" new diets, supplements and exercise regimens, however, health and

wellness are maddeningly difficult to systematize. many of the claims put forward in support of the paleo diet – that it "reduces or elimi-nates" the risk of chronic disease, cures acne, improves energy levels and athletic performance and ameliorates autoimmune symptoms – are cited with equal fervor as benefits of following a raw food, vegan, vegetarian or gluten-free diet. Thinking of diet as a panacea can give us a comforting illusion of control, but staying healthy and feeling good depends on more than what we eat or don't eat.

according to the website thepaleodiet.com, the paleo diet can help its adherents to "lose weight, without dieting and exercise." al-though its proponents strenuously object to its characterization as a fad diet, any system that promises to help you shed pounds, no physi-cal exertion necessary, is inherently suspect. Weight loss is still a func-tion of calories consumed versus calories expended. and, although it is touted as the biologically correct way to achieve optimal health, by eating as we are "designed" to eat, the paleo diet leaves out some important factors: presumably, our paleolithic ancestors also engaged in extended bouts of vigorous exercise.

i could spend a long time picking apart the scientific claims of the paleo diet, many of which fall apart under scrutiny, but that isn't my point. rather, i propose that deciding what and how to eat is about more than determining the optimal fuel for our bodies: it's about cul-ture, community, celebration, and good old-fashioned pleasure. There is ample enjoyment to be found in the foods sanctioned by the paleo diet: a plate of fresh, vivid greens, a meltingly rich slice of just-caught salmon, the juicy complexity of a ripe pear. The fact remains, however, that we are not cavemen (and cavemen didn't have access to fruits and vegetables made more delectable by generations of selective breeding, anyway). our culture and history have been inextricably tied to the cultivation of grains and legumes for millennia; they appear in our religious sacraments, feast-day traditions and most cherished national dishes. We have evolved not only to cultivate these foods, but to use them in ingenious and delightful ways, to elevate cuisine to an art-form, and to derive intense pleasure from cooking and eating them.

There is no question that mindful eating is an important part of staying healthy and feeling good. reducing intake of highly-processed foods and eating plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables makes good nu-tritional sense. But so does balancing health and pleasure, getting lots of exercise, considering the ethical and environmental implications of what you eat, and feasting with friends and family. if the paleo diet makes you feel good, great; just don't tell me i shouldn't eat bread because of "science."

against paleoIf loving bread is wrong, I don't want to be right

by eMily Klein

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editor's note: pages 12 and 13 represent our "food for Thought" reader forum. views expressed in this section are those

of the op/ed contributors and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Edible San Juan Mountains.


Being a vegetable producer for the past nine years has given me plenty of time to cultivate thoughts on the subject of “food se-curity.” after scribbling pages of notes and engaging in endless con-versations with community members, the reality finally dawned on me. There is no pleasant way to communicate the truth i see, but i promise to be sincere and tactful.

my moment of clarity came during a roundtable discussion with Woody tasch of the slow money alliance. tasch highlights the es-sential need for financial investment into small farms. perhaps even more powerful was the resulting community discussion that was stirred up among local food advocates in the room. What i heard that evening re-affirmed all of the things i have been too scared to say out loud to the citizens of the la plata county, the greater san juans, and especially to my fellow growers, myself included.

i first want to acknowledge an amazing job done within our lo-cal food movement and our efforts toward a more food-secure com-munity. We have expanded in diversity, quantity and availability of local food. to all of the supportive chefs, forward-thinking school districts, natural food stores, growers, consumers and community organizations supporting this movement ... thank you.

However, we have hardly scratched the surface in achieving a truly sustainable food system and a functioning food security base. Honestly, we are not even close. When strolling through the du-rango farmers market, it may look and feel good to be surrounded by the local abundance, but what you’re seeing is just a single spoke in the food security wheel. do we really understand how much food goes though two durango city markets, an alberstons, a Walmart, three natural food stores, dozens of restaurants and bars, a hospital, fort lewis college (4,000 students) and durango 9r (2,800 stu-dents)? our vegetable production is a far cry from our deep desires for a truly food-secure community.

one could place all of the vegetable production in la plata county under a single center pivot of alfalfa on Highway 172 – just a clue as to the scale of our vegetable food (in)security. some of our inefficiencies are due to farmers struggling to be economically vi-able. as the produce market grows, we also need more chefs will-ing to take risks. as local growers, we need to communicate with each other, sharing equipment and knowledge. i also see many farms struggling to produce a wide variety of crops on very small acreage.

Here is the kicker... there are no small vegetable farms in la plata county. There are mostly hand-dug gardens and large market gardens (under 4 acres). We are farmers at heart, but we do not re-ally have production farms, the kind that produce the quantity of food needed to feed our community. We need acres of carrots, beets, potatoes and cabbage. durango school district 9r will go though 500 pounds of potatoes in one meal. Zia taqueria will run though 10,000 pounds of both cabbage and zucchini a year. The deli at na-

ture's oasis will run through over 5,000 pounds of beets annually for their beet salad. do you see where i am going here? These are huge volumes of product for single dishes. if you take into account all other vegetable products we can grow here, the total volume of food push-ing through our community is absolutely staggering.

so i must ask, where are the small-scale vegetable production farms to grow the literally tons of food needed to feed 51,917 county residents? We desperately need them. moreover, why don't we have them? We are toiling in the soil in the name of crop diversity, tee-tering on the edge of financial sustainability. it’s exciting to see the youthful energy going into agriculture, but i fear that this micro-model of high diversity, low comparative volume, and intensive labor will eventually result in personal and financial burnout (which hap-pens almost every year).

let's not continually reinvent the wheel. While we are selling at the durango farmers market, shamrock and sysco trucks idle in our downtown alleys, delivering tons of food daily all over durango. We must keep our innovative markets, maintain the diversity we have in types of production (keeping our personal and financial health in the forefront), but we must also figure out, together, how to expand our production. The answer is not in niche products and creating new marketing schemes. it’s on the availability sheets and invoices at mercy Hospital cafe, the sudexo dining Hall at fort lewis college, and in every invoice box in every single county bar and restaurant. There are things we can never grow in volume here (bananas, mangos and tomatoes in large volumes), but we can grow root crops, storage vegetables, greens, etc. in our climate. We can grow these crops ex-traordinarily well.

again, i must em-phasize how much i ap-preciate our committed local growers and the extraordinary effort of our community to make food security a priority. i simply want to challenge our food security stake-holders (everyone), espe-cially our food produc-ers, to kick it up a notch. let’s work with each other to create a system that is financially viable, physically sustainable, and ultimately successful in feeding our people.

WHere is our food security?by MiKe nolan

owner / operator of Mountain Root Produce in Hesperus, CO

FreshLocal

CommunitySustainableEducation

on College & 8th(close to downtown Durango)

Visit:Open Daily 8am-9pm

www.DurangoNaturalFoods.coop

tHe mountain roaster

Doug Jones, roastmaster at Tomboy Coffee in Telluride, CO.


in tHe roast

tHe mountain roasterstory by rachel turiel

some of us have a lifetime coffee history which can be graphed much like that state-ment of earnings sent by the social security administration. There’s the teenage stage (heavy on sugar and thrill of discovering legal drugs); next, the college years (very important angsty journal writing in coffee shops); then, for many of us comes the parent stage, where the morning cup is taken like preparatory medicine for another day with small, early-rising anarchists.

i stretch out my morning cup of coffee for hours, protecting it from bodies that ricochet through the house like lightning. The mug is greeted and left repeatedly, becoming quickly tepid, but serving as a focal point i keep returning to, like the Buddhists returning again and again to their breath.

apparently being not much more neurologically sophisticated than pavlov’s dogs, i feign sleep each morning until i hear the btttttz of my husband’s fingers on our coffee grinder. and while i don’t hold many designs on the manufacturing of this rich and creamy morn-ing cup, there are four local roasters for whom selecting, roasting and brewing coffee is not a casual love affair.

tHe BeanThe coffee bean is, in fact, a seed: green, hard, and nestled pearl-like in the red-fleshed

(or, uncommonly, yellow or purple) fruit. The green seed tastes of nothing much until the magic of heat unlocks over 900 chemical reactions, producing the roasted coffee bean, which many of us aren’t exactly addicted to, it’s just that, like breathing, we don’t want to start our day without it.

a coffee tree produces a scant 1 to 2 pounds of beans each year, and while, in america, we’d hardly tolerate a backyard apple tree with such a small yield, carl rand, owner of durango coffee company (the roasting company, not the retail shop), warns that you can’t evaluate third-world agriculture in american terms. The majority of trees grow on diversified family farms and many south american families are considered well off through the selling of five 150-pound bags of coffee each year.

Zach Ray, head roaster at Desert Sun Coffee Roasters in Durango, CO.


tHe roasti am at desert sun coffee roasters in durango on a bright, fall

morning. it’s like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory here. tubes whisk just-roasted beans overhead, depositing plump, chocolate-colored discs into precise receptacles 15 feet away. Head roaster Zach ray is helicoptering between computer screen and hulking roasting ma-chine, tossing out Zen coffee koans like, “acidity is a big thing in cof-fee, but has nothing to do with pH.” The owner, glenn lathrop, slaps labels on brown packages. The four employees seem happy and busy, yet relaxed, oompa loompas in a brave new world of specialty coffee. “for us,” lathrop explains, “coffee isn’t a caffeine delivery mecha-nism. it’s the pursuit of quality.

most beans are in and out of the roaster in under 15 minutes; the higher the temperature, the darker the roast (dark roasts contain less caffeine because heat breaks down the caffeine molecule). The dark roast (commonly known as french or italian roast), which rose to fame as the comet of starbucks streaked across america, is valued for its roasty-smoky flavor. and though these professional roasters refrain from unabashedly calling it out as the amateur’s roast, a dark roast can mask inferior-quality beans, or simply the uniqueness of a par-ticular bean’s flavor. mick Hill, of telluride coffee roasters (which includes the steaming Bean coffee label), has been known to compare dark roasted coffee to burnt toast. However, matt lauer, proprietor (with his wife linda james) of fahrenheit coffee in mancos, believes “some beans are optimized at a darker roast. Beans from east timor like to be roasted dark.”

carl rand began roasting beans in 1984, back when the typical commercial cup of coffee in durango was sourced from a round met-al tin that promised to be “the best part of waking up.” it’s the chal-lenge of coffee roasting that keeps rand engaged. “There are probably 200 steps between tree and cup that affect the taste of a cup coffee,” rand says.

BreWing at Homeone can stumble upon brewing the perfect cup, as i seem to do,

unwittingly, several times a week (due more perhaps to relaxed week-end morning plus sausage scramble than any brewing optimization), but these great masters assure me if you follow the rules, you get a perfect cup.

Zach ray suggests (“suggests” is not a frivolous term, people) starting with whole beans. “once a bean is roasted, air and time are the enemy,” ray says. grinding increases the surface area and expo-sure to enemy forces. “it’s the difference between freshly ground pep-per and pre-ground pepper,” ray explains, while mick Hill does not mince words: “Would you slice your bread the night before?”

carl rand adds that having an effective coffee grinder is key, and Hill suggests (again, “suggests” being a synonym of “mandates”) a burr grinder, as opposed to a blade grinder, because the burr grinder pulverizes beans into an exact and consistent size. (Burr grinders re-tail between $40 and $200). if the particles are different sizes, the coffee beans will be both over- and under-extracted.

mick Hill, originally from england, says that in europe, there are no drip coffee machines, just french press and espresso machines. The problem with coffee machines, matt lauer of fahrenheit cof-fee roasters in mancos, explains, is that the water enters the brew-ing cycle before reaching the boiling point, and as water in the basin decreases, it surpasses the boiling point, hence the sputtering sound heard at the end of the brewing cycle. This is, effectively, the sound of your coffee burning. lauer recommends, at our high altitude, pour-ing heated water through grounds just before it boils. (Water at 7000 feet boils at 12 degrees f lower than at sea level).

and despite those bedraggled “morning afters” when you sus-pect you’re outwitting your own coffee system by brewing the same amount of coffee with less water for an especially strong cup, beware: too much water over-extracts the coffee, accentuating the bitter com-pounds, and too little misses the sweet compounds.

and as for the rumors that Bread in durango achieves their po-tent product by brewing their coffee not with water but with, well, coffee: entirely untrue. They do, however, use a durango coffee company blend. and eno, also in durango, may be the only regional cafe that brews a single pour-over cup (desert sun) for each customer.

as for brewing method, mick Hill says “it’s all about the time cof-fee spends with water.” if you’re using a pour-over drip method (coffee cone), Hill recommends grinding beans very fine to slow the passage of water, and stirring water-soaked beans to completely saturate. Hill touts the clever coffee dripper (available through sweetmarias.com

When Matt Lauer isn't serving as barista at Fahrenheit in Mancos, he is in his nearby home garage-turned-roasting-room attempting to keep up with demand.


for about $20), which holds the water in the beans for 3-4 minutes before extracting.

if you’re aiming for perfection, lauer suggests refraining from using soap on your coffee-extracting tools, because it leaves a resi-due, and instead opting for a baking soda and hot water soak, which breaks down residual coffee oils. and finally, don’t store your beans in the freezer or refrigerator; these temperatures change the flavors originating from the oils on the beans.

HealtH BenefitsWhile i’ll never mistake my morning cup for, say, a kale salad,

there are numerous studies pointing to the benefits of drinking cof-fee. regular but moderate (2 or less cups/day) coffee usage has been shown to reduce the risks of type 2 diabetes, depression, parkinson’s, alzheimer’s, cancers of the liver, prostate, kidney and colon. coffee is walloped with antioxidants: a single cup of coffee has about 30 times the antioxidants as, incidentally, a serving of kale. also, drinking cof-fee lowers blood sugar and increases the number of beneficial bacteria

in the intestinal tract. steve ilg, durango author and fitness coach, advises his clients

to remember that for athletes, it's not so much about the coffee as it is about the performance-enhancing properties of the caffeine. caf-feine has been shown to impart significant increases in an athlete's capacity to “go harder” without the effort seeming as difficult. ilg also notes that depending chronically upon caffeine fatigues our neuro-hormonal and adrenal systems. “use coffee’s energetic charms wisely,” ilg advises.

epilogueit turns out my household is lousy with coffee violations (dark

roast, night before pre-grind, blade grinder, occasional freezer stor-age). until i get chosen for the new reality show extreme coffee makeovers, i’m searching out grants for home coffee upgrades. ulti-mately, at 6:30 am, sun not yet out of the eastern gates and children already agitating for candy, there’s never a bad cup. as matt lauer of fahrenheit coffee says, “it’s a wonderful, wonderful beverage.”

Carl Rand spends a Friday afternoon cupping – the professional practice of observing the nuances of brewed coffee. The process includes sniffing the cof-fee. It also involves tasting the brew by slurping the coffee in an aggressive fashion that ensures that the liquid is evenly spread across the entire tongue.

The wee humble brew pub powered by the sun and wind (yes, completely).

602 Clinton St.Ridgway, Colorado

970-626-5333

hut cuisineby anna riling

you’re hanging your skins up to dry on the rafters of the fire-lit interior of a backcountry hut after putting in a full day of laps through virginal san juan fluff. you’ve broken trail up a few thousand vertical feet, dug yourself out of a tree well or two, and you never want to see another protein bar again. now, your stomach is growling in protest to its sole contents of a hastily-downed pBr.

it’s dinner time. The menu? no cans of refrieds or watery mari-nara here. shake that ’fro out from under your beanie, and belly up to the ultimate après ski comfort food: fondue.

HistoryWhat most people think of first when they hear the word “fon-

due,” besides macramé and faux wood paneling, is the cheese version. The word fondue stems from the french fondre (foon-dh), which means “to melt.” fondue originated in the french-speaking swiss canton of neuchâtel, and used the classic mountain cheeses gruyère and emmentaler. it began as a handy way to use up hardened cheese and stale bread for a hearty winter meal. it was popularized in the u.s. during the 1960s and ’70s through a vigorous promotional cam-paign by the swiss cheese union to increase cheese consumption (am i the only one who pictures a focus group made up of extremely polite tough-guy union members?).

another take is oil fondue, or fondue bourguignonne (boohr-geen-yon), where skewers of meat, cheese, or vegetables are cooked in a pot of heated oil and then dipped in sauces. The name derives from

the french wine region of Burgundy, where vineyard owners would supply pots of heated oil for workers to cook meat they brought from home.

as if dipping things in oil and cheese could not get any more glu-tinous, let’s not forget the american contribution to this culinary icon: chocolate fondue. This one hails from a new york city press confer-ence in 1966, during which journalists were served the world’s first toblerone fondue.

ingredientscheese fondue has two basic ingredients: one or more types of

strong cheese, and a liquid such as dry white wine, beer, lemon juice, or kirsch (cherry brandy). aside from imparting a distinct flavor, the alcohol lowers the boiling point of fondues, which prevents the cheese from curdling. The addition of cornstarch in many recipes also creates a smoother emulsion.

french or italian bread is the most common thing at the end of those color-coded forks, but you shouldn’t stop there. experiment with vegetables like zucchini, mushrooms, gherkins, blanched aspara-gus, potatoes, or cherry tomatoes. or, depending on the flavor of the cheese, dip a slice of lemon-sprinkled apple in a cheddar fondue, or even an orange wedge in a sweet Brie.

fondue bourguignonne is perhaps the simplest to prepare, and essentially consists of oil (preferably peanut, but vegetable works just fine), whatever you’re cooking in it, and sauces for dipping. Becca

on tHe slopesJames Ranch Belford Fondue

james of james ranch, which raises grass-fed beef in the animas valley outside durango, recommends filet mignon or, for those with shallower pockets, a sirloin tip. a tender cut of meat is ideal, she says, otherwise the cooked result will be too tough.

a chocolate fondue uses high-quality chocolate, whether it be milk, semisweet, or dark; a liquid fat such as whipping cream; and a liqueur such as amaretto, kirsch, or irish cream. chocolate fondues are well-complimented by fruits such as strawberries, honeydew, cher-ries, or banana. Want something more indulgent? (it was a long day of skiing after all.) try pieces of angel food cake, marshmallows, or shortbread cookies. don’t worry; you’ll burn it off tomorrow.

eQuipmentHerein lies the rub. although fine

for bourguignonne, a plain old metal pot conducts heat, which will burn cheese and chocolate if left on the heat too long. tra-ditional fondue sets contain an earthen-ware, ceramic, or enameled cast-iron pot, which rests on a stand over a heat source.

That heat source varies too. for cheese and oil fondues, an alcohol- or gel-based fuel is hot enough. for chocolate, those are too hot; use a votive candle under a ceramic pot. a double boiler is required to heat the chocolate on the stovetop first before transferring it to the table (you can improvise with a metal bowl that sits in-side a saucepan).

don’t forget the utensils. if you use the hut’s forks, plan on wearing mittens. just like the metal pot, metal utensils will conduct heat. for a bour-guignonne, have two forks or skewers per guest. That way, one piece of meat can cook while another cools.

The great thing about packing for hut trips is that the heaviest things you’ll bring are on your feet. That, and everyone is already expecting to carry their weight in whiskey, wine, and beer. There’s plenty of room in your pack (or your buddy’s) for that fondue set col-lecting dust in your garage.

WasHing it doWnin the past, cold drinks were typically not served during a fondue

meal because they were thought to lead to indigestion (although it seems to me the more obvious culprit is the quarter pound of cheese per serving). to keep with tradition, serve a mulled wine, unsweet-ened tea, or a glass of the wine or beer used in preparing the fondue.

glühwein is a mulled wine traditionally served at christmastime in Holland and germany; it’s essentially a warm blanket, a recliner, and a crackling fire together in a mug. a red wine, often a port, is heated and spiced with cinnamon, cloves, anise, vanilla, orange slices, and sugar.

ruth drew, of guy drew vineyards in mcelmo canyon, recom-

mends making mulled wine with their sweet merlot, with its slightly sweet and fruity palate. although the winery does produce a port, which has a higher alcohol content than other wines, drew points out that “When you’re making mulled wine, you’re burning off the alco-hol, so port is just more expensive.”

aaron moore, general manager of sutcliffe vineyards, also in mcelmo canyon, recommends their merlot as well. “it’s meant to stand on its own, but it should make a delicious mulled wine too,” says moore. Both wines are readily available in local liquor stores.

le menu fondueThe next time you’re assigned dinner duty in a backcountry hut,

blow away your buddies with start to finish fondue. Begin with a cheese fondue course. try using james ranch’s Belford cheese, a creamy gouda-style cheese that pairs well both with crusty bread and apple slices. meanwhile, heat some oil on the stovetop, and when the first course is done, serve a fondue bourguignonne with cubes of locally-raised beef tenderloin. for dessert, prepare a chocolate fondue, ac-companied by a cozy glass of glühwein.

it’s a bit more involved than throwing spa-ghetti in a pot, true. But if you did things the easy way, you’d be riding a lift instead of earn-ing your turns.

tips1. if your cheese fondue is too thick, stir in

warm wine, beer, or cider.2. if it’s too thin, add more cheese or dis-

solve one to two teaspoons of cornstarch in one tablespoon of wine or lemon juice, and whisk in.

3. if it’s lumpy, whisk in one teaspoon lemon or lime juice.4. if the fondue becomes stringy, reduce heat and stir to return to

a creamy consistency.5. scrape pot to prevent burning, swirl in a figure eight pattern

each time someone dips something in; this will keep it creamy.6. if doubling a cheese fondue recipe, there will be less surface area

to evaporate liquids, so do not quite double the liquid ingredient.7. When the cheese is almost gone, a hard crust will form at the

bottom of the fondue pot. This is a cracker-like delicacy called la ré-ligieuse (ruh-lee-zhuz), french for “the nun.” lift it out break it into pieces to share.

8. to test for temperature in a bourguignonne, drop a cube of bread into the oil; it should turn golden brown in about 30 seconds. always work with a thermometer. use oil with a high smoke point, such as peanut or safflower (approximately 355 degrees above 3500 feet elevation).

9. if too many pieces of meat are being cooked at one time, they will lower the temperature of the oil. stick to a maximum of six pieces.

Glühwein


Beef tenDerlOin BOurGuiGnOnne

inGreDientsOil

1 pound beef tenderloin, at room temperature, trimmed of fat and cut into one-inch cubes

salt and pepper

Dips (such as creamy horseradish sauce, honey barbecue sauce, and red pepper aioli)

MetHOD

in a saucepan, heat oil to 375° f and transfer to fondue pot. Do not fill fondue pot more than half full.toss beef with a little oil and salt and pepper.spear cube of beef with fondue fork and cook for about a minute. Once cooked, transfer beef to a paper lined plate and pat off any excess oil. Dip cubes in sauce.

DArk CHOCOlAte fOnDue

inGreDients¾ cup whipping cream

12 ounces dark chocolate, chopped

2 tablespoons liqueur (amaretto, kirsch, irish cream)

MetHODin the top of a double boiler over hot (not boiling) water, heat cream until warm. Add chocolate, stirring constantly until melted and smooth. remove from heat. stir in liqueur and transfer immediately to dessert fondue pot over candle flame.serve with melon cubes, cherries, strawberries, banana, pound cake, or marshmallows.

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through the winter970.967.3000

970 769 1022820 Main Avenue | Durango CO 81301{ located in the back of There’s No Place Like Home }

Monday-Saturday 1-5 pm

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WHITE DRAGON

HAND-BREWED ARTISANAL TEAS + TEA TO TAKE HOME

JAMes rAnCH BelfOrD fOnDueinGreDients6 ounces edam cheese, grated

6 ounces James ranch Belford cheese, grated

2 ounces Gruyere cheese, grated

2 teaspoons cornstarch

1 clove garlic, halved

6 ounces lager beer, room temperature

1 teaspoon fresh lime juice

MetHOD

in a bowl, combine edam, Belford, Gruyere, and cornstarch; mix well to coat cheese with cornstarch. set aside.rub inside of large saucepan with cut sides of garlic. Discard garlic. Add beer and lime juice; bring to a simmer over medium heat. reduce heat to medium-low.Add cheese mixture by handfuls to saucepan, stirring constantly after each addition with a wooden spoon in a figure-eight motion until cheese is melted. transfer to fondue pot.serve with cubes of french, dark rye, or pumpernickel bread and slices of apple and pear.

GlüHWein

inGreDients4 cups apple cider

1 bottle red wine, such as merlot

1/4 cup honey

2 cinnamon sticks

1 orange, zested and juiced

4 whole cloves

3 star anise

2 oranges, peeled and sliced

MetHOD

Combine the cider or juice, wine, honey, cinnamon sticks, zest, juice, cloves and star anise in a large saucepan. Cook over very low heat, being careful not to let it boil, for 30 minutes or more, adding more honey or spices as desired. Pour into mugs, add an orange peel to each, and serve.


of grass & grain& the steaK

on your plateby laura thoMas

consider the feedlot. it’s not a pretty fantasy, but it is at the core of an occasionally heated conversation among chefs, cooks, and lovers of steak: should we be finishing our beef with grain, or should they eat grass all the way to the slaughterhouse?

films like the 2008 documentary “food, inc.,” which examines some of the more egregious practices of industrial-scale farming, have inspired a notable wave of consumer awareness. Beef that came from cattle raised solely on pasture accounted for just 3% of national sales in 2011, but the number is growing.

grass is the native food of ruminants like domestic cattle or our region’s elk. it is the primary and frequently sole feed of all cattle until the final third of their lives. When cattle are finished on grass, the meat is extremely lean with a more assertive flavor than grain-finishing yields. given the small market share of grass-finished beef, these qualities may be unfamiliar to most americans.

yet, the image of the industrial scale feedlot is hard for some consumers to stomach: tens of thousands of animals packed shoulder-to-shoulder, standing up to those shoulders in feces, and finishing out their days on a diet for which their

bodies are not suited. pair that image with research that unfavorably contrasts the nutritional profile of the typical corn-fed steak with its grass-finished counterpart. it would seem that grass finishing is best for cows and consumers alike. in fact, the terms “grass-fed” or “grass-finished” are widely considered proof that the animal was humanely treated. it is grass-finished cattle that populate the platonic green pas-tures of our minds. on an ethical level, many people feel better about eating that steak.

now picture this: in a lush, tree-lined canyon, a humble barn. Be-side the barn, a small corral, dappled with shade. in one corner, a large feeder stuffed with sweet, fresh hay. in the other corner, a trough filled with a mix of additive-free white grains: oats, barley, wheat. Wan-dering contentedly between them is a handful of sleek, glossy cows. These are grain-finished cattle.

Here in the san juans, a few ranchers are carefully and humanely turning out grain-finished beef. if we level the ethical field between grass and grain, then we can get down to brass tacks: how’s that steak?

“i’ll eat a grass-fed steak as long as i can borrow your teeth to do it,” jokes tammee tuttle, owner of ridgway’s true grit café. tuttle admits she’s only tried grass-finished beef once.

“flavor comes from the way the fat melts through a well-marbled piece of meat as you’re cooking it. With grass-finished beef, there’s no fat, so there’s no opportunity to develop flavor or tenderness,” says tuttle.

she also feels that most of her customers prefer and expect the sweet, mild flavor that comes from grain-finishing. so that is what the true grit serves. 2011 was a banner year for the rustic pub, which oc-cupies a building on the town square that was featured in the epony-mous 1969 Western.

tuttle cites the relatively low cost of a meal at the true grit for its recession-defying success, “i will always try to accommodate cus-tomer desires, such as the recent trend toward gluten-free food. But a grass-finished steak costs me about double.”

she has, however, switched to locally-sourced beef. “We’re a

The Bell Ranch


ranching community, so i want to support that.” This summer, she connected with chimney peak ranch, which is also in ridgway and happens to be the location of some other famous scenes from “true grit.”

chimney peak ranch is also the location of the contented grain-finished cattle described above.

on the other side of the imposing sneffels range that looms over ridgway and the true grit, is durango’s ore House, a traditional steak restaurant that, in contrast, has fully embraced the grass-fin-ished trend. its rough-hewn, dark interior and cozy shelves overflow-ing with mementos of ranching and mountain life suggest that it could be the true grit’s long-lost twin.

But the menu tells a different story. “We do everything!” says manager and executive chef ryan lowe. When it comes to beef, he means it. The menu is a survey of the ways that beef may be treated: wet and dry aging, grass and grain finished. lowe makes an effort to source all his beef locally, or at least from somewhere in colorado.

However, the bottom line at the ore House is humane treatment. “There really isn’t certified organic beef, because it’s not possible to control all the grass sources that beef around here might be grazing. But there is a process for certifying humane treatment. We would like to move toward having all our beef certified eventually.”

in the meantime, lowe seeks out small-scale operations, citing their tendency to know and care about their livestock.

lowe says that the keys to making all the customers happy are appropriate handling of each cut and a well-trained staff. “We’re kind of like car salesmen,” he laughs. “We try to match each customer with the dish that will suit their tastes.”

Back in the kitchen, the richly-marbled grain-finished beef gets just salt, pepper, and time on the grill. meanwhile, the grass-finished beef is treated much like its nearest wild counterpart: elk. “We might pan sear it to seal in the natural juices, and pair that steak with an acidic fruit sauce like raspberry to balance its stronger flavor.”

He asks his wait staff to discourage customers from ordering a grass-finished cut beyond medium. “it can be dry, and no one likes that.”

lowe knows from experience: when he first took over the ore House, three years ago, his thinking about the menu was informed by his wife. she is vegan. “Here i was, married to a vegan, and i’m running a steak house. she encouraged me to think about my food,” says lowe. He cites her gentle influence as the reason he sought out grass-finished beef.

But some customers weren’t happy. Their steaks were sometimes dry, tough, or gamey. Then, in the course of investigating sources for his original grass-finished menu, lowe discovered something he wasn’t expecting at all: “grass-finishing doesn’t necessarily guarantee a happy cow.”

dr. christopher raines, professor of meat science at pennsylva-nia state university (no kidding, meat science!) notes, “The only dif-ference is that cattle producing grass-fed beef can never have eaten grain. There are no restrictions on whether the cattle come from high-density stocking areas or if they received veterinary treatment similar to conventionally-raised cattle.”

Quite a few ore House customers, ranchers among them, have told lowe that they prefer the grass-finished steaks. “it’s an acquired taste,” says lowe, “and local ranchers have told me that they love it because they’ve always raised their beef on grass.”

But like the true grit café, the ore House does a brisk business with tourists, most of whom, lowe says, are unfamiliar with the plea-sures of grass-finished beef ’s lean, peppery intensity.

as long as he can get his hands on beef from well-treated animals, lowe plans to keep serving the whole array of options. “i love grass-finished beef, but i run a steak house. That sweet, fatty marbled steak is a beautiful thing.”

in a perfect world, his customers will be savoring their steaks side by side, as placid and happy as the cows that created them.

27 27 edible san juan mountains Winter 2012/2013

*reserve your space for springyour customer is looking at this ...

san juan mountainsedibleLaura Thomas: 970 946 7475Visit us: www. jamesranch.net or call our market (970) 385-6858

James Ranch: where producing organic, pure, flavorful meats

cheeses, vegetables, and eggs is a way of life, not just an outcome of production.

Come taste it! Eat at the Harvest Grill & Greens or

shop at our Ranch Market 33846 Hwy 550→Located 10 miles N of Durango, just past Honeyville

Winter Hours: Grill & Market Saturdays 11am-5pm


Edible San Juan Mountains: A tea room in Durango. How and where did this idea arise? Was it a whim, or the realization of a grand plan?

Michael Thunder: “The tea room is the result of passion, pure and simple. i have a passion for imbibing and sharing the world's best teas. i love tea personally and wanted to share that with others, one cup at a time. This action creates community, which i relish. i never know who is going to come through the noren [japanese curtain] on the door. in addition, i get to drink and share some of the world's best teas daily.”

after careers that included real estate, psychotherapy, cook and practicing monk, michael Thunder finds himself home, where he belongs, at The White dragon tearoom and gallery. Hidden in the back of his wife's store, There's no place like Home, on main ave. in durango, co, Thunder serves up some of the finest and rarest teas to be found in the southwest.

sit at his bar. let him brew a sample from his collection. Thunder talks you through your experience. He knows the history. He knows the farmer. He knows the nuance. a sip of carefully crafted tea takes him to places. you can see it.

the tea therapistan Edible interview with

White Dragon Tearoom's Michael Thunder

Michael Thunder of the White Dragon Tearoom in Durango, CO.

From where did your passion for tea come?it started at age four with tea parties with my grandmother.

she used a child's set of limoges dishes and i think there was one teaspoon of tea to a cup of milk. in those days, tea and coffee for children [supposedly] stunted their growth. That's why i am short. grandmother was french canadian, so we drank english teas from india: darjeeling, assam and some sliders from sri lanka. all big and black and wanting some milk to bind the tannins. We had a set up in her attic – my sister, she and i – and we'd party at this miniature tea table. many of the habitués of my tea room were first introduced to tea by their grandmothers, and some by the medicine people of their tribes.

Tea isn't exactly the typical American's first choice of beverage. It is kind of the quiet stepsister to our beloved coffee. Why do you think that is?

The Boston tea party, english taxation and the american revo-lution set us back several centuries in the tea trade. Besides, coffee is delicious.

Do you see a shift happening? Does tea have the potential to become the next big thing?

yes. teavana wants to be the starbucks of tea. There is a ground swell, especially among those who don't drive yet (a huge percentage of my drinkers are under 16), those with doctor-ordered withdrawals from coffee, and purists who love all the details of tea. tea is magic, as are its results.

That’s interesting because what is amazing to me is that something can be so wildly revered and yet have no high attached to it (see: beer, cof-fee, wine ... all reverential).

you are misguided! i’ve had to confiscate car keys from tea-high individuals until they settled down enough to go back out into the world. it’s a different type of high. it is the high of leaving the street behind and entering the magical world of tea and its myriad gifts of the spirit.

What is the rarest tea I can find in your store? What is its story?The rarest one is almost gone, less than an ounce left, so i won't

mention that. The second rarest is a white tea called The Breath of the goddess. it is sublime, from the mountain top where, in the mist, it translated the cosmic energy into leaves that hold bliss. When one

drinks this, their eyes roll back in their head. story: from the top of the mountain in chi-na, very small produc-tion, hard to get out. The family from whom i purchase it has been in the tea trade for two generations and is con-nected, so the farmer who grows it still sells

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to them instead of the wealthiest people in china who are buying up the best teas.

I have heard that in the United States we are denied some of the best teas in the world – they are unavailable to us. Is this true?

some of the best teas never get out of china. not even average chinese get to taste it. although china is a communist country, there are wealthy people who get the best teas. That, and the humble farm-ers who grow their own drink the best tea in china. in india and japan it simply takes money and connections. i have some of the best matcha and sencha that come out of japan.

What is the difference between, say, Lipton tea, and tea we can get in your tea room?

The lipton problem is what i call the White man's illumination. lipton just followed the energy to provide a lot of tea to a lot of peo-ple. i am invested in artisanal tea which comes from locally grown stock and generational farmers in china and japan. india is another story although i use only one major tea estate there at this time and i know the mother and son who run it, along with the extended family.

i was faced with the lipton problem this week. i have had several requests for navajo tea. i found a resource and she brought me my first bag yesterday. she had to drive seventy miles to gather the herb, clean it and then bring it to durango. i had imagined in an illuminat-ed way becoming the king of navajo tea and distributing it, because of its medicinal value, nationally. i got my lesson yesterday. There simply isn't enough. There is a very limited quantity and it would be wrong to try to exploit it, like osha. This is a situation where there is sacred business in the gathering and preparation of the substance. one must respect that and yet in this world the momentum is toward bigger and more. one must stay in touch with the sacred, i think. for soul's sake. at least that is my path. it's not about money and several estates in sri lanka, darjeeling and assam like the lipton dynasty. it is so easy to fall into the world of illuminated creativity and so very important at this time in history to avoid doing that and stay grounded in sustainability.

Tell me how to taste tea like an expert. What should I be thinking about and looking for?

you must trust and develop your own sense of taste. no one is wrong in what he or she tastes. it’s like wine, you learn the lingo to describe what you are tasting and you have to keep after it. That's the best way. you should be thinking about and looking for your personal bliss as reported by your extravagant taste buds while drinking in the White dragon tea room tea with me.

If you were stranded on a deserted island and could have only one tea with you, what would it be?

a sencha called uji gyokuro from south of kyoto, japan, because it makes me very happy and the first steep is as close to heaven as we get here on earth.


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