21, Cottonwood Steakhouse is a Winner.

Cottonwood Steakhouse

409 West Main Street (Route 191)
Bluff, Utah, 84512

Phone: (435) 672-2281

Hours of Operation: Monday thru Sunday, 5:30pm to 9:30pm

Website: http://www.cottonwoodsteakhouse.com/

Rick Reeb

April Fools – Not!  Cottonwood Steakhouse reopened its doors on April 1, 2016 and began their 21^st season in Bluff, Utah.  Owners, Rick Reeb and Diana Davidson, along with their amazing staff, had a rush filled week to make sure all was perfect for opening night.  Let me tell you that when you dine at the Steakhouse, you are welcomed in as if it’s family dinner night.  Everyone is all smiles, friendly, talkative and very attentive; the owners want you to come back again and again.

Kevin - The Chef

Reed Sampson - Waiter Extraordinaire

There will be a couple of changes, menu wise, this year.  New specials like Bison Meatloaf, and side dishes of mashed sweet potatoes or a new take on the already scrumptious grill roasted potatoes.  Barbequed Ribs, Steaks, Grilled Chicken and Seafood will still be offered; why change greatness!?!  Manning the grill station is the ever happy Kevin; ninja master of grilling utensils.  The special offered currently is “The Duke”, 16 ounce Bone-In Ribeye Steak, cooked as you wish, served with Bread, Salad or Coleslaw, Ranch Beans, Western Potatoes and Glazed Carrots.  Smaller appetite?  Try “The Marshall”, 8 or 10 ounce New York Strip Steak; again, served with all the fixings and grilled to perfection.

The Duke - 16 ounce Bone-In Ribeye Steak

The Marshall - 10 ounce NY Strip Steak

For the buck, you get a big bang of a meal, but how is the food, is what you might be wondering?  The steaks are specially ordered from Colorado; grass fed beef, nicely marbled.  Whether a dinner or menu salad, the vegetables are fresh and crisp; dressings and soups house made and bowl licking good.  Beans are slow cooked in a Dutch oven with just a hint of spicy heat; the potatoes parboiled before roasting on the grill and lightly seasoned.  One of the items visitors want, when visiting the Southwest, is a cowboy meal, and Cottonwood Steakhouse serves up the finest in San Juan County.  The red bandana that serves as napkin is even given to all diners to take as a souvenir.  Oh, how could I forget, the desserts!  House made pies, brownies and bread pudding so delicious, the transcendence into five extra pounds becomes meaningless.

Homemade Bread, Fresh Salad

Brownie Sundae

Key Lime Pie

Raspberry Cheesecake

Now don’t just take my word that Cottonwood Steakhouse is worth the visit; OnlyInYourState.com (http://www.onlyinyourstate.com/utah/steakhouses-in-ut/) voted it #5 on their 2015 listing of best steakhouses in Utah.  Couples, families, locals, visitors passing through, and for special occasions, the folks at Cottonwood Steakhouse will welcome you all.

Mary Cokenour

Menu

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Story of Bluff, Utah.

Grains of Our Lives.

The visual piles of dried corn, pinon nuts and beans flowing through outstretched fingers lead my mind to these words, “Like sands through the hourglass, so are the Days of Our Lives.”  While this long running soap opera, aka daytime drama, has not much to do with life in our Southwest; grains have always been a relied on staple.  Corn (maize) was introduced to the Native cultures of the Southwest approximately 2100 BC from Mesoamerica.  “Isn’t that Mexico?” you might be asking, that is only partially correct.  Mesoamerica extended from central Mexico to Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica.  Corn cobs found at ruin sites and inside caves were much smaller than what we know of today; similar to baby ornamentals seen around fall holidays.  Great care was taken in cultivating stronger varieties that would survive higher altitudes, and weather systems that alternated between drought and flooding.

In the 1520s, explorers from Spain introduced wheat to Mexico; as with corn, it made its way up to the Southwest and into Native fields.  Evidence of trade, between San Juan County Native cultures and Mexico, was proven with the finding a macaw feather shawl, in Canyonlands National Park, by explorer, Kent Frost; housed and exhibited at Edge of the Cedar State Park and Museum.  Traces of cacao were found in pottery at Alkali Ridge National Monument; an exhibit was displayed at the Natural History Museum in Salt Lake City in 2014.

How did corn and wheat become the flour to make breads?  The Puebloan people used stone tools; a “mano”, a smooth hand-held stone was used against a “metate”, a large stone with a depression. The movement of the hand stone against the depressed stone consisted of a circular, rocking or chopping motion, using one or both hands, to grind.  Work rooms, called “mealing” rooms, were established with sets of manos and metates for mass grinding efforts; basically gossip central for the women.  Baking nowadays is much easier with gas or electric powered ovens; the Puebloans used a mud adobe-built outdoor oven.  The oven was beehive shaped, using wood as the heat source to build a fire inside.  When the proper amount of time had passed, embers and ashes were removed, or moved about the oven; bread was then inserted for baking.  This oven was also used for roasting corn and cooking meats.   Now aren’t you happy that all you have to do is head on down to the local supermarket to buy pre-ground flours and fully baked bread goods?

Using a recipe from the “Pueblo Indian Cookbook” by Phyllis Hughes, I ventured into making Pueblo Oven Bread.  As a first timer, my bread was not the prettiest, but it tasted pretty darned good, especially with butter, honey, combo of both; oh, and bacon.  Bacon makes almost everything better….not desserts though, no not desserts.  This first time I also used basic all-purpose white flour, but I’m going to be playing with other types of flours, like wheat, blue corn and corn.  It will be interesting to see if baking times vary with the flours, and especially the tastes.  Let me tell you that as a side for a freshly cooked batch of Anasazi beans with onions and bacon, the bread is so satisfying.  Ah, but that’s another story to tell…

 

 

Pueblo Bread

(Pueblo Indian Cookbook – page 10)

 Ingredients:

9 cups flour

2 packages dry yeast
½ cup warm water (110-120 degrees)
2 tsp. salt
4 Tbsp. melted lard or cooking oil
2 cups water

Preparation:

Soften yeast in warm water.  Mix melted lard or oil, salt and yeast in large bowl.  Alternately add flour and water, a little at a time.  (I did 2 cups flour, ½ cup water), beating thoroughly after each addition, kneading in last of flour until dough is very smooth.  Shape in ball and let rise, covered with damp cloth in large greased bowl until doubled in size.

Activate Yeast

 

Alternate Addition of Flour and Water.

 
 
 

Need in Last Cup of Flour.

 

Dough in Bowl for First Rising.

 

Dough Doubles in Size.

Punch down, and knead on floured board for at least five minutes.  Shape into four balls, put in greased baking pans (I used 4-8 inch nonstick cake pans), cover with cloth and let rise for 20-30 minutes in warm place.

Second Kneading (1)

Second Kneading (2)

Four Equal Portions

Dough Balls in Greased Pans.

After Second Rising, Ready to Bake.

Bake in 400F oven for 50 minutes (my gas oven did require the 50 minutes) or until tops are browned and loaves sound hollow when tapped.

Mary Cokenour

Welcoming Spring with Bright Sweetness.

Ode to a Jellybean

Ovoid of bright, shiny color.

Taste buds salivating for more.
Rolling round in the mouth.
Swallow, there it goes, down south.

Fruity flavors, some not so.

Try the red one, give it a go.
Fan the tongue, boy that's hot.
Spit, hit the trash can, what a shot.

Buy a bagful, perhaps a pound.
Chew a handful, hear the lip smacking sound.
Grab a tissue, looking like a fool.
Wipe up that multi colored drool.

Who needs drugs with this candy treat.

Smiling as you slip out of your seat.
Oh the pleasure you think with a blissful sigh.
Oh the pleasure of a sugar high.

~Mary Cokenour – 2005~

 

Now what does the jellybean have to do with spring exactly?  Not much, except for the ovoid shape that closely resembles the egg.  Hmm, better give some history about eggs and spring before getting to the jellybean.  Ostara (also spelled Eostre) is a Germanic deity; a fertility Goddess whose festival centers on the Spring Equinox; her symbols are the egg and the rabbit. When Christianity began to make the rounds in Europe, there was no better way to have non-believers embrace it than to incorporate some of their beliefs; an assimilation. March 20^th is the Spring Equinox; the Christian Easter falls in springtime; children are given multi-colored eggs and chocolate rabbits; even the name Easter closely resembles the name of the Goddess, Eostre.  This concludes our history lesson for today; now back to the jellybean.

Even though Turkish Delight (a jelly candy coated in powdered sugar) was around for centuries; it was not easily shipped and melted quickly.  In 1861, a Boston confectioner, William Schrafft, invented a jelly candy with a firm outer shell.  His biggest selling point?  Ship these candies to the boys and men fighting in the Civil War; give them a little sweet pleasure to get their minds off the horrors of war.   By the 1930s, the egg shaped candies were becoming incorporated into Easter celebrations with simple fruit flavors.  Not only were children fascinated by these confections, but parents loved that they were compact and didn’t melt too quickly in tiny hands.

The jellybean is now one of the most popular candies sold throughout the world; spiced, sours, Harry Potter influenced flavors of dirt, vomit and earwax (who did the taste testing for these!??!); Jelly Belly has 50 flavors, more than Baskin-Robbins has in ice cream.   Jellybeans are available all year long, in various sizes, even sugar free; they give a boost of energy; the bright colors and flavors even boost the mood.  Having a bad day and angry, why fight?  Let those little candies sweeten your mood, then you can look at things from a brighter perspective. 

Personally, there is a small bag of jellybeans in each of our vehicles.  Stuck in traffic, some idiot just cut us off, or the smallest thing just set one of us off; the bag of beans comes out and the world doesn’t seem so bad suddenly.  Does a simple candy snack really solve problems?  Of course not; just maybe though, it gives the mind a simple way out.   A momentary spurt of realization that what feels so terrible isn’t that bad at all.

Joyous Spring!!!

Mary Cokenour

Three Ingredients, Twenty Minutes, Dinner Done.

I am not immune to "I don't want to cook" moods; perhaps it was a lousy, and too long of a, day at work.  It could have been one of adventuring all day with my adorable husband, and food is the last thing on my mind; sleep sounds a lot better.  More than likely though, I'm just feeling lazy.  The convenience of packaged, canned, or premade meals is hard to resist at these times; it's the chemical additives that make me hesitate in purchasing them.  Then again, I do not resist buying those packages of rice and noodle side dishes; that convenience I'm not willing to give up.

It came to be, one evening, that I was staring into the freezer; spying a bag of frozen shrimp and a package of sugar snap peas, a stir fry seemed the answer for dinner.  *sigh*  I just didn't want to get out the Asian ingredients, and I know my hubby always wanted fried rice when we did Asian.  No, this wouldn't do; maybe I had some Knorr Rice Sides with an Asian flare; nope, I had already used the last package up.  Wait though, two packages of herb and butter sat behind the ones of Spanish rice. 

I used the microwave to carefully defrost the shrimp and snap peas; I didn't want them to cook before their time.  Getting out the five quart cooking pot, I began the rice according to package directions.  After it began boiling, I turned down the heat, added the shrimp and snap peas, covered the pot and waited the required seven minutes.  Testing the rice, it was still too firm, so covered the pot for two more minutes; turned off the heat, uncovered and within two more minutes, the entire dish was ready for eating.

The shrimp was pink and had a lovely scrunch to it; the sugar snap peas popped in the mouth; the herb and butter rice was perfect in texture, the herbs and butter adding flavor to the shrimp and snap peas.  The naysayers who only make everything from scratch, and it better all be organic, will probably be saying how gross my meal was.  Guess what?  It was delicious!

 

Shrimp, Sugar Snap Peas and Rice

 

 

Ingredients:

 

2 (5.4 oz.) packages Knorr Rice Sides, herb and butter flavor

1 lb. jumbo shrimp, peeled and deveined

1 (10 oz.) package frozen sugar snap peas, defrosted

 

Preparation:

 

Using a 5-quart cooking pot, prepare rice according to package directions; at stage where the pot is covered and heat turned down, add the shrimp and snap peas.  Check rice for doneness after 7 minutes; cook 2 minutes more if necessary.

 

Remove from heat, uncover and let rest for 2 minutes before serving.

 

Makes 6 servings.

 

Mary Cokenour

 



My Copycat Recipe Joins Taste of Home.

When we lived on the East Coast, there were two warehouse chain stores in the area, BJ's Warehouse and Costco.  The closest place now is Sam's Club in Grand Junction, CO, or Farmington, NM; we do not often go there due to the long travel time to either.  One item we really enjoyed eating was the stuffed salmon; of course it was stuffed with imitation crab meat, but we did not care because it tasted so yummy.

With salmon fillets and imitation crab meat on hand; time to get the little gray cells going, remember how the stuffed salmon tasted and come up with a copycat recipe.  Well folks, it came out well, and very, very close to the actual product I used to purchase.  It came out so well, that Taste of Home decided to feature it in their Christmas Recipe Book – 2015 (page 92).  My recipe appears in the “Entertainment Shortcuts” section; convenience products and quick ideas to impress yuletide guests.  Taste of Home changed my recipe a bit to create a service for twelve; I am going to give you the original recipe.  By the way, I served this dish to my hubby for Valentine’s Day, so it does not have to be just for a December holiday meal.

Just shows you, when you enjoy a certain food product, or even a dish served at a restaurant; do not immediately say, “I can’t make this myself.”  Never, say never!

 

Stuffed Salmon

Ingredients:

4 Tbsp. olive oil, divided in half

4 (1/2 lb. each) salmon fillets, at least 1 ½” thick; deboned and skin removed
1 cup flaked style imitation crab meat, pulled apart
1 cup hot, cooked long grain rice
1 Tbsp. melted butter
1 Tbsp. softened cream cheese
½ tsp. minced garlic
¼ tsp. each crushed, dried celery seed, basil, oregano, marjoram, rosemary and thyme
1 tsp. each salt and dill

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 400F.  Brush two Tbsp. olive oil on bottom and sides of a 1.5 quart baking dish.

Make a cut lengthwise on each fillet, leave ½” uncut space on each side, and on the bottom; create a pocket by gently running tip of sharp knife under each flap and leave ½” space each side.

In a medium bowl, combine crab meat, rice, butter, cream cheese, garlic and herbs (except salt and dill) well.  Spoon filling into each filet pocket; creating a small mound at the top.  Brush remaining olive oil onto salmon; sprinkle salt and dill over the salmon and place into baking dish.  Bake for 20 minutes; check for doneness (thickest part of fillet will flake) about two minutes before allotted cooking time.

Makes 4 servings.

Options: add ¼ cup tiny shrimp to the mixture; or better yet, use real lump crab meat instead of the imitation.

 

Mary Cokenour

Eat Like Family at Helgerson’s.

A new food stand has recently opened down in Bluff, Utah, across Main Street from Bluff Fort.  Helgerson’s Red Rock Chicken is owned by Steve and Tonya who only just moved to San Juan County in August 2015.  Why San Juan County?  As Tonya tells it, it was time to load up the family, pick a direction and wherever they ended up, that would become home.  Formerly of Wisconsin, this foray into food is a family affair; their three children (Amber, Brandon, Dylon) all help mom and dad out with the stand.

Tonya with daughter, Amber.

  

Steve and Tonya Helgerson.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tonya’s grandfather loved to cook and passed on many recipes to her; she has revamped some, but most retain grandpa’s flair.  Now why a food stand, not a restaurant?  Freedom of movement, plain and simple.  With a food stand, the Helgerson family can take their delicious food and bring it to County events.  Diners can sit underneath tents, have the outdoor feel sitting at picnic tables; almost like being at a family function.  Those who are off to hiking and exploring can grab a boxed lunch of tasty grilled chicken or hotdogs, sloppy joe sandwich, and awesome side dishes.

Bluff Fort is just across the road.

Steve mans the grills.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, how is the food?  The leg quarters of Chicken are parboiled before going on the grill, to help ensure quick, yet proper, cooking.  A special seasoning (it’s a secret blend) goes on which infuses the meat itself, not just the skin.  The Sloppy Joes may be your typical sloppy joe, but who doesn’t love those!  The Macaroni Salad is a mixture of elbow macaroni, chopped celery and hard boiled eggs, Cheddar cheese chunks and shredded tuna fish.  This may sound like too much, but it was light and refreshing.  The Baked Beans are cooked with slices of bacon over the top; the killer side though is the Bacon Fried Macaroni.  The cooked pasta is mixed on the grill with bacon, bell peppers (yellow, red, green), chopped egg and hotdogs.  The smoky flavor is intense, yet goes perfectly with the grilled chicken meal.  Portions are generous, so large appetites will be extremely pleased.

Bacon Fried Macaroni and Garlic Toast.

Baked Beans with Bacon.

Grilled Chicken Meal.



Sloppy Joe.

 

 



Sloppy Joe Mixture waiting to be served.

The Works!!!

Red Rock Chicken does not have any firm days or hours of operation; the best way to find out when they’re open is to go to their Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100010377071659&fref=ts).  Currently the name is Bluff Utah, which shouldn’t be confused with Bluff, Utah’s own Facebook page.  Since the tourist season is not in full swing yet, keeping an eye on Main Street will help determine set days and hours.  The opening day, the stand was busy with locals; besides our own positive comments, we heard, “Oh yeah!, Mmm!, Love the sloppy joes!, Pretty Good!, Thumbs Up!”. 

 

 

Helgerson’s Red Rock Chicken; a family run food stand that treats their customers like family.

When you spot those bright orange tents, you know good food is waiting for you.

Mary Cokenour