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THE LOCAVORE COLUMN

Chef Ryan Hardy explains why Aspen's culture of eating is truly a local phenomenon.

It started with a list of ingredients. The sweet tomatoes, perfumed basil, dripping peaches, crisp radishes, and spicy arugula were all on the tip of my tongue.  A thousand pounds of local, grass-fed beef was being delivered to the restaurant and I had to figure out what to do with it all. I grabbed a stack of my favorite cookbooks looking for clues on ways to steer them to my menu. Somewhere in these pages lay the flavors I searched for; it was just a question of
finding them.
Cookbooks, the good ones anyway, are a study in cultural anthropology. Culture is the expression of values and enduring truths held by a society. Diet reflects these values. Our American food culture, our national cookbook, is full of instant gratification recipes, the kind that strip away the familial and social connection that food brings to our table. We have traded our once-proud cookbook for a culture of...

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