Cooking School

Over the years I've used many kinds of dining table placemats -- quilted, woven, vinyl, linen, cotton, rattan -- home decor stores are filled with placemats and you can get any kind you want.

Recently I found ones I'd never seen before: leather placemats. Red. I had no idea. Leather placemats -- who knew you could eat your vegan quinoa grain bowl on a cowhide mat?

I got them at the Santa Fe School of Cooking. This place is a local gem.

At their kitchens on Guadalupe Street they offer hands-on cooking classes, demonstrations by local chefs, and guided walking tours of restaurants with stops at several for samples and snacks. You'll see clumps of people walking behind a tour guide around the plaza, going in and out of restaurants and looking pretty happy.

The kitchen classroom is impressive. They teach southwest recipes, of course, and the unique flavors of New Mexican food which is a real draw. There are classes taught by local chefs on chocolate, wine, and items from their restaurant menus. There are Mexican cuisine classes too.

They also feature Native American chefs who teach indigenous foods updated for modern eaters. I'm really interested in a native cooking demo class by Kiowa chef Lois Ellen Frank, a Phd in culinary anthropology (Culinary anthropology? Where were these kinds of studies when I was in school?) I've watched her videos and she's a great teacher / explainer about the history of foods.

I've signed up for one of her Native American classes this spring. Blue corn gnocchi arrowheads with guajillo chile sauce, seasonal greens with jalapeño dressing, lamb stuffed rellenos, sweet fry bread with berries and prickly pear syrup. She serves what she cooks at the end of the class. Mmmm.

Santa Fe School of Cooking also has a retail store on site, where I bought cookbooks, kitchen tchotchkes, and some hot sauces, soup mixes and condiments to give as Christmas presents the past two years. We got our chile stove top roaster grill there and we use it all the time.

The store is small, but a delight to shop in. That's where I spied the leather placemats.

Leather is more expensive than vinyl and nothing at this high end cooking school is cheap. So when a neighbor who works at the store said she could get me the mats at employee discount, I got them. The discount was significant.

The placemats are rich red leather on one side, and intricately tooled brown leather on the other. I don't know why they please me so much, but they do.

I think because they are subtle, simple and luxe. That describes my aspirations, certainly not my actual style.

After my cooking class this spring, I'll serve you a delicious native inspired meal rich with indigenous history on a mat of luxurious red cowhide and when we are done, we'll flip the mats over to the tooled leather side and bring out the decanter of aged ruby port wine.

🍷 Cigars outside on the patio, not indoors, though.