Benjamin Henion

Here we have a sweet, spicy, soft and crunchy amuse. The chipotle goat cheese is a warm, fairly spicy mixture that I froze and wrapped with grilled green onions. I then sliced them and placed them on a miniature fried red chile tortilla. The coriander crisp is an asiago crisp that has been cooked with toasted coriander, cumin and chile powder. The dish was nice, but a little spicy. That's why I decided that a little tamarind honey would compliment the dish nicely.

Transglutaminase , aka Meat Glue made this dish work. Transglutaminase is a powder that actually binds (or glues) proteins to each other. In this example, I have glued beef tenderloin to shrimp and wrapped the whole thing in bacon. After the transglutaninase sets up (about 4 hours) the protein can be cooked as one piece of meat. Once cooked, the bacon was nice and crisp, the shrimp and beef tenderloin stayed together in the same shape I had molded them, and it was easily sliced into nice thin pieces . This is my first time using meat glue, so I am pretty happy with the result. This was only an experiment , and it was delicious. I served the bacon wrapped surf and turf with an avocado-mango salsa and a spicy smoked tomato coulis. The garnish was just some baby frisee with red and green tango tied together with a grilled chive.

I think its safe to say that bears are attracted to a campsite due to the remaining scent of food. Well why, you might ask, would a grown man that had been elbow deep in fresh salmon and raw chicken be anywhere near such an animal. That my friend is an after thought. It seems that this guy has returned. If memory serves me, this is the same creature that I unintentionally chased a year or so ago. Payback? Maybe. I think he was just enjoying the cool, breezy day here at the resort. He made himself comfortable this morning in a tree next to the driving range (which stayed closed) and relaxed all day long. I hope my niece and nephew get a chance to see this guy before he retires for the winter. This is just one more reason I love living and working in Colorado. Without looking, wildlife seems to be right at your front door.

As we creep closer to delivering our new fall/winter Colorado Fusion menu, we have been experimenting with some of the concepts. Although it needs to be somewhat refined, the wild mushroom mosaic is going to be nice. With this one, I used a blend of crimini , oyster and portobella mushrooms. I plan to have a more complex selection come time to roll out the new menu. Anyways, a nice hot saute of the the mushrooms along with diced shallot, minced garlic and a white wine deglaze got a very nice, classical flavor from the blend. I used a vegetable stock to make my aspic (to hold together the terrine) and covered the shroom blend. After an hour or so the gelatin set up and I was able to slice it fairly thin to expose the different internal structures of the mushrooms. I tossed some baby greens with truffle oil, salt and pepper to make a small salad. I roasted of a couple red bell peppers and made a quick coulis. The flavors worked pretty well together, however I am going to try a diff