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Confessions of a vegetarian
Cassie Pence
Vail CO, Colorado
September 17, 2007

BEAVER CREEK - As a vegetarian, what I'm about to disclose may be quite shocking.

I like my meat on a stick.

There, I've said it.

I'm not one of those vegetarians who can brag, "It's been 25 years since I've eaten meat." A mere five years ago - when traveling in a Third World country and hearing the bloodcurdling scream of a swine about to go to slaughter - I decided that animal products were not my cup of tea. It wasn't a hard transition as I've always been quick to choose salad over steak.

But on occasion, I like chicken broth in my soup and pasta tastes better when tossed in bacon fat. Cooking is one of my passions, and I like to learn about cultures in the context of food. Let's face it - around the world meat is still very popular.

My favorite time to indulge in carne is at culinary festivals, where the portions are usually nibbles - i.e., on a stick - and industry experts are on hand to enhance the experience with knowledge and insight on how the dish was created. If I'm learning, I can't feel guilty, right?

San Francisco treats

On Saturday night at the Best of San Francisco Tasting, the grand finale to the first-ever Beaver Creek Wine and Spirits Festival, I threw my vegetarianism out the window. If I didn't, I probably would have left starving anyway. So with an open mind and an empty belly, I toured around the Vilar Center lobby trying anything and everything handed to me on a little plastic plate.

The festival, as the name suggests, celebrates the City by the Bay. Each of the three guest chefs cooked a special brunch, lunch or dinner throughout the four days, and then everyone convened (Beaver Creek chefs included) at the grand tasting. There were interactive seminars, too, and throughout the festival, food was paired with winning wines and spirits from the San Francisco International Wine Competition and the San Francisco World Spirits Competition.

My favorite dish at the tasting - and everyone else's, as I deducted after an informal survey - was Richard Sandoval's Lomo Alambre, a meat-lover's skewer of beef tenderloin, Mexican chorizo and bacon.

"It is a very typical Mexican dish, but I make it a little different by adding Mexican chorizo, bacon, grilled cactus, mushrooms, gouda cheese and a tomatillo-chile morita sauce," Sandoval said. "The flavors of this dish are very well balanced, and I think that this dish exemplifies my modern Mexican cuisine really well. I like how the spiciness of the chorizo together with the sauce complements the meat and cheese."

Although Sandoval has Maya in San Francisco, he also has three restaurants in Denver - Tamayo, La Sandia and Zengo - which are now on my to-go-and-eat list.

"The key to getting the most out of these festivals is to ask a lot of questions," Allison Levine said in passing at the tasting. Levine is assistant to Anthony Dias Blue, whose company Blue Lifestyle produced the event and produces wine and food events like it all over the country. Blue is a wine, food and lifestyle writer who for 20 years was associated with Bon Appetit. If you eat it or drink it, Blue is an expert on it.

I took Levine's advice and graciously accepted chef Gerald Hirigoyen's trout escabeche with heirloom tomato salad.

"What is escabeche?" I asked, because the fish's texture was perfect.

"Escabeche is an old Spanish tradition when you make a spicy marinade and pour it over the fish and let it sit. The fish cooks in its marinade," Hirigoyen explained in his thick Basque accent. Hirigoyen owns Piperade, a restaurant in San Francisco specializing in his home cuisine.

Mixing it up

I'm a firm believer that at festivals like this you should also broaden your taste horizon - in other words, try something you might otherwise pass on. Feeling extra experimental, I grabbed one of Hubert Keller's "shots" of smoked salmon tartar and cauliflower couscous topped with cucumber gelee and a drop of rosemary-flavored vodka. For my taste, he could have stopped with the tartar and couscous; the gelee was too reminiscent of college-style Jello shots for my liking. But the parfait presentation was beautiful, and I will subsequently Google for a cauliflower couscous recipe.

Another popular tasting, judging by the constant line and my own taste buds, was chef Joseph Manzare's bollito panini, featuring Kobe beef brisket on a rustic Italian roll topped with salsa verde. The dish was inspired by some sandwiches Manzare, chef and owner of Zuppa, Pescheria and The Globe in San Francisco, encountered at a market in Tuscany, Italy. Even this vegetarian ate two of the rich sandwiches.

Beaver Creek chefs were not to be outdone. Most notable was Foxnut chef Riley Romanin's crab and Olathe corn chowder. Another favorite was Chophouse chef Ken Hanson's braised beef short rib with cabernet demi glace and cream parmesan polenta.

And if you left the tasting without trying Pascal Coudouy's chocolate mousse with caramelized almonds, I recommend you find the chef at Bivans in the Park Hyatt and beg him to re-create it. It was my favorite meatless dish of the evening.

The herbivore gods definitely are punishing me for my vegetarian hiatus. I feel a distinct sleepiness and fatigue that accompanies gorging on flesh every time. But it was worth it. Besides, before the tasting I picked up a week's worth of greens at the Edwards Farmers' Market, which I'm confident will subdue the gods' wrath until my next meat-eating extravaganza.