Kitchen show gets X-Treme: Craftwood Inn films reality TV

Chefs at The Craftwood Inn in Manitou Springs have been cooking up something different this week: a cooking show.

Jeff Knight, general manager of the Craftwood Inn in Manitou Springs, has been anointed “The X-Treme Chef.” And, he’s the host of a pilot TV reality show by the same name.

How extreme can a cooking show get?

Some of the ingredients must come from the wilds of Colorado, shot in the meadows, fished from streams, picked from bushes.

For more than six hours on Wednesday, Derrick Perkins, the creator and director, darted around the Craftwood kitchen, choreographing Knight and the competing chefs as they prepared their dishes.

 The kitchen was brightly light with several halogen camera lights, adding even more heat to the already hot kitchen with huge pots of steaming sauces and heated ovens. Toward the end of the filming the chefs were heating up, too.

The pressure of preparing foods that were new to them combined with the pressure of presenting the food attractively and making it taste as good as it looked.

The filming, being done by Springs-based Mammoth Motion Media, started Monday and continued through Wednesday. The premise of the show is to gather, hunt and fish for local foods of a region and in the process discover local culinary talent.

“I love TV food shows,” Perkins said, “But I want to taste the dishes I see prepared. With this show, the chef who wins will be preparing the winning dish at their restaurant. Viewers can go to the restaurant after the episode and taste the actual dish.”

Aaron Whitcomb, executive chef at Ya Ya’s Euro Bistro in Denver and April Koos, a chef at The Broadmoor’s Tavern restaurant went knife to knife in the pilot. On Monday they traveled to Tarryall River Valley, near Lake George to forage for cattails, rose hips, stinging nettles and trout. This was a list of ingredients they were given to find on the outing. They could also pick up anything else they thought they could use to create a Colorado-centric meal.

“They must use two of the items on the list for an appetizer of entree,” Perkins said. “They can also use a pantry of local ingredients that Jeff has prepared for them.”

Not everything worked right away. One of the chefs had wanted to do a trout tartare, but after the group Googled safe fish practices, they learned that without freezing or cooking it, raw trout could contain dangerous worm eggs.

At the end of the day, Koos had prepared two dishes: cattail, wild stinging nettle, and roasted pueblo pepper soup and grilled trout with silver sage, lemon zest, rose hip butter and corn cakes. Whitcomb came through with three dishes: cattail bellini with brook trout roe and stinging nettle crema; heirloom zebra tomatoes with seared trout; and, hot rock-style smoked trout with rose hip gastrique.

And the winner is?

Whitcomb took the top honors. If the pilot is picked up, the next filming will be in Hawaii, where Whitcomb will go up against a chef from one of the islands. The plan is to produce six to nine episodes in different locations using local ingredients.