Susan D Curtis - Santa Fe School of Cooking: Celebrating the Foods of New Mexico

Santa Fe School of Cooking

Celebrating the Foods of New Mexico

Susan Curtis & Nicole Curtis Ammerman

Photographs by Jen Judge

Santa Fe School of Cooking

Celebrating the Foods of New Mexico

Digital Edition 1.0

Text 2014 Susan Curtis & Nicole Curtis Ammerman

Photographs 2014 Jen Judge

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except brief portions quoted for purpose of review.

Gibbs Smith

P.O. Box 667

Layton, Utah 84041

Orders: 1.800.835.4993

www.gibbs-smith.com

ISBN: 978-1-4236-3814-8

To the many talented chefs at the Santa Fe School of Cookingpast, present and future.

A dream come true takes many forms. Sometimes its a grand thing that seems absolutely meant to happen. At other times, it appears to be an almost accidental success.

And some triumphs spring from a seed buried deep inside, unknown to the dreamer and ready to sprout only when the time is right. You might take a young girl summering on a ranch with a horse as her babysitter, add foraged berries and a bit of wild game and fish from the river, and from this homespun mix, something remarkable might arise.

The Santa Fe School of Cooking grew from just such a foundation. My dream-become-reality began in the verdant Conant Valley on the south fork of Idahos Snake River. Summers and weekends were spent in an idyllic western lifestyle, defined by the livestock that we raisedBlack Angus cattle, sheep, pigs, chickensand the crops necessary to support them. The abundance that came to our table came from the land, aided by my mothers and grandmothers hard work and amazing cooking skills. Good food is in my blood. Breakfast started with Grandmas homemade cinnamon rolls and the day progressed with meats aged in the rock cellar, vegetables from the garden and watercress from local creeks, all supplemented by jams and jellies made from fruits picked in the surrounding mountains.

Sustainability was not a byword in those days; it was how we lived out of necessity. With the grocery store an hour away, cooking with food from the land was a daily activityno short cuts or fast food available. The result was a daily feast of delicious homegrown and homemade dishes, shared convivially with family and frequent drop-in friends.

While marrying at twenty-one was not surprising to me, marrying a musical scientist rather than a rancher was an unexpected partnership, one that eventually brought our young family to New Mexico for my husband Davids career. Little did I know this move would ultimately prove to be life changing. In 1989, after a successful real estate career, seeing one daughter successfully embarked on a college education and the other ready to leave, I was faced with that familiar, age-old question, What next? And there in the midst of a classic midlife crisis, the dormant seeds of my past began to sprout.

David and I had enjoyed traveling around the world, and good food was always an integral part of our journeys. Attending Joe Cahns Cooking School in New Orleans on one of our trips had apparently planted another seed, because I woke up one night struck by the thought of creating a cooking school of my own! I shook David awake to share my idea of a school similar to Joes, a place for having fun while educating food-lovers about distinctive regional flavors rooted in traditional culture. My patient husband suggested we talk in the morning, and within ten days, we were on our way back to Cajun country, where Joe Cahn agreed to act as a consultant.

By December of 1989, after months of finding a space for a school, collecting equipment, recruiting chefs and sampling recipes, we opened the doors of the Santa Fe School of Cooking just in time for the Christmas holiday. And while that first quarter was slow, my total dedication to this dream-in-progress kept me saying yesyes to shipping without a shipping department, yes to selling ingredients not actually in stock, yes to class sizes that seemed impossible. Staying true to my natural positivity through thick and thin stood me in good stead as I watched the school grow and thrive.

Because we shared a conviction to raise our children as full participants in family life, David and I made it a priority to sit down nightly to eat together as a family, and each of our daughters, Nicole and Kristen, had weekly cooking duties. When Nicole returned to Santa Fe in 1994 following college and a business career, the School of Cooking was a going concern, but I was ready to welcome a second pair of hands. Im grateful that our focus on family was repaid with Nicoles warm personality being added to the mix. Along with her background in business, Nicole brought a host of fresh ideas and the same enthusiastic yes that seems to be our family calling card. With our two minds and four hands, always ably aided by the wise counsel of my other daughter, Kristen, and the analytic abilities of my husband, Dave, the school steadily earned a reputation as the expert on regional New Mexican cuisine.

Conant Valley, Idaho, south fork of the Snake River.

Vacant lot and dirt street of cooking school area, circa 1940s.

Henry Lawrences Packard Dealership, 1948.

Closing the deal.

Santa Fe School of Cooking, 2013.

As the school flourished under the guidance of our mother-daughter team, it continued to gain recognition as the best place to learn about the traditions and techniques of southwestern cuisine. We relished the passionate participation of local culinary talents, many of whom went on to carve out exceptional careers of their own. Over the course of two decades, legions of home cooks and professional chefs who wanted to expand their repertoire found their way up to the top floor of a downtown Santa Fe mercado , where the school enjoyed a 20-plus-year run. As we conscientiously nurtured the business, celebrity chefs came from all over to conduct specialty classes, and the restaurant walking tours Nicole dreamed up became popular must-do culinary adventures for locals and tourists alike. Together, Nicole and I published three signature cookbooks, and we expanded the market inventory and produced our own line of ingredients. And along the way, the demand for deeper, hands-on experiences became more and more apparent.