by Clay Fong

When one thinks of regional cookbooks, one often harkens back to such works as the 1959 classic River Road Recipes, produced by the Junior League of Baton Rouge, La. But that volume is now 50 years old, and the recently published Colorado Organic shows things have come a long way since then. As much cookbook as it is photographic paean and narrative detailing cutting-edge farmers and chefs in the Centennial State, Colorado Organic is a volume reflecting the 21st-century zeitgeist.

The book’s creator, Jennifer Olson, writes in the introduction that the book “is a celebration of cooking seasonally and eating locally.” Her desire to promote local organics stems from her belief that “everyone deserves produce that is free of pesticides, as well as meat from animals that have been free to roam the pasture and not given antibiotics and unnatural foods to ‘beef’ them up.”

A team effort, photographed by Olson, and written by Cecily Cullen and Mindy Sink, Colorado Organic differs from the traditional cookbook in both structure and visual appeal. The book is divided into seasons, with each providing a description of a farm, such as Boulder’s Cure Organics operation, and a profile of two chefs. Each chef provides five recipes, which spans an entire meal from starters to dessert.

The fall section features Hugo Matheson of The Kitchen. Recipes from this popular Boulder eatery include butternut squash soup, broccoli rabe with chili, sautéed beans with thyme, salt baked chicken, and an almond tart with slow-roasted pear. Where possible, recipes note the source of the ingredients — for example, the soup recipe specifies Munson Farm butternut squash, Udi’s Bakery bread and Monroe Organic Farm yellow onion.

This book’s recipes are well within the capabilities of the aspiring home chef. One is pleasantly surprised to discover Frasca’s recipe for grilled romaine and beef salad is easily duplicated with perhaps the most challenging task being the gathering of ingredients for the anchovy vinaigrette. Perhaps the surprising simplicity of some of the recipes is attributable to the fact that less is indeed more when dealing with artisanal ingredients. The trick is to let premium produce and meat speak for themselves, as opposed to camouflaging their quality under a cloak of seasoning or over-the-top presentation.

The vivid photography passes the critical test of cookbook visuals in that it makes the reader hunger for the depicted dish. Macro shots of produce are arranged in collage form to eye-catching effect. Images of working kitchens and bustling farmers’ markets convey these settings’ vibrancy, and one photo of the mountain landscape above Paonia made me long for my Western Slope days.

Olson’s lens captures the character and warmth of her portrait subjects, and her shot of Shanan Olson and Rich Pecoraro of Abbondanza Organic Seeds & Produce makes one glad to have purchased seeds from them.

Certainly this volume doesn’t possess the environmental or political insight one might find from the likes of Michael Pollan. You won’t find a deep discussion of the carbon footprint of beef production here. While this may not be entirely a fair criticism, it does little to dispel the impression that organics are a luxury to be enjoyed by the economically privileged. In some instances, dining in some of the profiled restaurants, such as Aspen’s Tony Montagne at The Little Nell, is beyond the reach of but a fortunate few.

These perhaps undeserved criticisms aside, Colorado Organic does provide gentle encouragement to seek out locally and sustainably produced foods and insight into what makes operations like Wisdom’s Natural Poultry tick. On its own terms, this work succeeds not just as a user-friendly cookbook, but also as inviting snapshot of the current state of organics. A treat for the eyes as well as the taste buds, this book is the perfect gift for a farmers’ market habitué, the amateur gourmet chef, or connoisseur of food prose and photography.

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