From the first discovery of fire, man has delighted in the wonder of an open flame, drawn to the spark of the crackling fire.
So when there’s food cooking on it? Like, maybe an entire head-to-tail pig?
Let’s just say this reporter channeled her inner neanderthal at the Heritage Fire food festival in Snowmass Village this weekend — and ate enough to survive the stone age. (Unlikely that cavemen consumed their meat with a bourbon reduction, though.)
The festival stops in cities and towns around the country, drawing hundreds of attendees to try food prepared over bonfires, smokers and sizzling grills. That element is partly what attracts chefs like Matthew Lefrance, who flipped long, thick slices of egg-soaked bread on a griddle rigged over a fire pit.
“I mean, everyone’s working together, having a good time, cooking meat over fire — I mean, I’m doing French toast,” he clarified.
He was onsite with pastry chef Ashley Jenkin to prepare a dessert concept: “Pain perdu,” fancy French toast, served with charred strawberries and salted vanilla pastry cream. The festival broadened the boundaries of its menu long ago, expanding from a carnivore’s club to a program that also features fish, vegetarian options and several seasonal sweets.
For Lefrance, cooking French toast over an open flame was “a first” — but then again, it seems like there are new ideas every year at Heritage Fire, he said.
“There's always a first going on here,” Lefrance said. “And it's fun and you learn something different and you give it a shot, make sure the temperatures are right. It's trial and error.”
The dish tastes about as decadent as it sounds — it paired rather well with Chef Will Nolan’s pork belly and caviar served at another tent during the initial “VIP” tasting. Some people chose to wash down their bites with a gin cocktail, made with the drippings of Jenkin’s charred strawberries; others opted to “kiss the pig” instead, taking a swig of tequila from a bottle adorned with the head of a roasted hog.
Heritage Fire is marketed as a “one of a kind outdoor bacchanal,” and it lived up to that reputation of revelry this weekend. But the festival is about far more than extravagant flavors and flames.
The “heritage” part of the name refers to animal breeds and heirloom produce that have been passed down through generations of family farms. And many of these dishes feature local ingredients prepared by local cooks.
Local Chef Matt Kennedy, from the catering company Foraged and Farmed, served tacos cubano with prosciutto he made himself — from a pig raised at Sustainable Settings, a biodynamic farm that applies philosophical principles to its practices in Carbondale. And at Chef Chris Lanter’s tent, a dish of smoked Karvoy salmon from Norway was served with a salad grown just half an hour from the site of the festival: Arugula came from Two Roots Farm in Emma, tomatoes from Cattle Creek Gardens near Carbondale.
“It’s the way food was intended to be eaten,” said Lanter, who is a chef and co-owner of the French restaurant Cache Cache in downtown Aspen and the managing partner of Home Team BBQ near Buttermilk Mountain.
“It's what it's all about, eating what's available and ready to eat right now,” Lanter said.
Chef Cesar Vazquez, who also works at Cache Cache, says it tastes better when it’s local, too.
“The farmers, they put [in] so much time to grow those products, so much passion. … I mean, you can tell the quality,” Vazquez said.
Lanter and Vazquez both believe that this festival is an opportunity to spread the good word of local sourcing — to help people “taste the difference,” as Vazquez puts it. (Though, Lanter noted, “most people are probably here because they're down with that.”)
The chefs feel a sense of responsibility here — not just to serve the “best bite” because it’s tasty, but to honor where the food has come from, too.
Just ask Chef Erin Shepherd, who had a pulled pork crostini and a grilled stone fruit custard on the menu for her tent.
“We’re really just trying to show this animal some respect, and just showcase it as best we can,” said Shepherd, who runs the Aspen catering business Sugarland Farm and Provisions. “I don’t want these deaths to be in vain in any way, so I’m just trying to really make them shine.”
She had two pigs cooking over her fire pit, including a heritage-breed Meishan pig.
“They're just a very, very special, special, special pig,” Shepherd said. “They're just treated completely different than most pigs are, it's a smaller operation. [There are] lots of people just really putting care into the development of these pigs — not just how they yield as meat, but they're really great animals.”
This year was Shepherd’s first as a featured chef at her own station, but she’s worked the festival with other teams in the past. She’s part of a community of cooks who return to the festival time and again, fostering camaraderie over the open flavor as attendees enjoy the flavors on the other side of the tent.
Matthew Lefrance, from the French toast griddle, describes it as a “family reunion.”
“You'll see 90% of the chefs year after year after year after year and it's just a community, it's not a competition,” he said.
Except in this case it is, technically, a competition. People got to vote on their favorite dish to crown a “Heritage Hero,” the winner of the “Best Bite” contest.
Chef Robbie Reyes from Breckenridge Distillery won for his summer corn uchepos — like a tamale, made with fresh corn instead of corn flour, and served with hearth-roasted beef cheeks, sarza criolla, creme de limon and cotija cheese.
The dish tasted bright like the season, thanks to the fresh corn and Peruvian salsa, but also hearty, and richer than expected. Even on a stomach already near capacity, this reporter found it a bite well worth savoring.
