Anniversaries often mean celebrations and an opportunity to reflect on memories made throughout the years.
Clay Coyote Gallery & Pottery is doing just that. To help celebrate its 30th year, the Hutchinson business will release its second cookbook later this month.
“There’s a lot of people in there who aren’t here anymore,” Morgan Baum, Clay Coyote chief executive officer, said of the cookbook. “So it’s partially a celebration of people’s lives.”
The new cookbook, “Cookin’ with the Coyotes: Friends in Your Cupboard,” offers 57 new recipes and 102 originals. But most importantly, the new cookbook shows readers how to use Clay Coyote’s cookware line, she said.
“We eat differently over 30 years. I mean, there’s still a whole chapter on hot dish, don’t get me wrong,” Baum said. “But there’s also recipes from North Africa and from Italy and from France ... there’s recipes that have just kind of become a part of our every day that we wanted to share with folks.”
In the back of the book, Baum created three different indexes — type of pot, ingredient and person who wrote the recipe, so readers have multiple ways of selecting recipes.
“We wanted to give everybody credit for their submissions, so you can find your neighbor’s name and then go see her recipe, which is really cool,” she said. “If someone gave you a cazuela as a gift, you can look in the index and find all the things you can do with that. We tried to give everybody who’s reading the book a place to enter.”
The last cookbook, written in 2006, was a hodgepodge of customers’ favorite recipes bound together in a spiral book with hand drawn illustrations.
Another change to the new cookbook is the organization of food categories, including breakfast, brunch, hot dish, dinner, appetizers, soups, salads and desserts. Each recipe has a short introduction and includes instructions to modify it for dietary restrictions as well as a list of pottery and tools needed. However, Clay Coyote cookware is not required.
“If it says to use a flameware skillet and you don’t have one, just use your skillet,” Baum said.
The cookbook also features humor-infused recipes, such as “Better Than It Looks Beef” and the classic “Elephant Stew.” Additionally, Baum included sought-after contributions from the Clay Coyote family, like Michelle Ebert’s mom’s raisin bars, which Baum makes for pottery events.
“I’ve been writing them (recipes) all up for our blog for years” she said. “I memorialized them in the cookbook. They’re the ones I tell everybody about.”
Clay Coyote has come a long way in its 30 years. Starting in 1994 in an old pump house on a farm north of Hutchinson, its ceramics were often sold on the honor system. Customers took a pot and left money.
“We still see customers at least once a month, if not more … who remember the pump house and fondly remember it, and the world’s changed in 30 years,” Baum said. “I mean, we no longer are writing our credit cards down, leaving them for random people on a gravel road, but the mentality is still there, we’re still kind of an honor system business. There’s still some pump house in our blood here.”
Clay Coyote opened its gallery in 2001.
“That was a really big milestone for the Clay Coyote,” Baum said. “It was when we began carrying not just our work, but other artists.”
Since then, the gallery has hosted more than 450 North American artists’ work, showcasing everything from jewelry, metal, fiber, painting, prints, leather, glass and wood arts.
“Our gallery’s smaller now, but we still carry 25 artists,” she said of the new location in downtown Hutchinson. “It’s amazing to me how many artists we’ve brought their work to the community in these 30 years.”
A big shift happened in 2008, when a cookbook author challenged Clay Coyote to make pots that could be used on the stove top.
“It was pretty unique,” Baum said. “There are only two other potters in the country that specialize in making flameware at volume. When we switched from being a kind of mugs and plates and bowls to super unique cookware, that’s what brought us kind of into the foodie pottery world. We still have the baker line. It’ll never go away, but the cookware line is what is super unique. That’s what puts us on the map.”
Over the years Clay Coyote has sold 150,000 to 210,000 pots, according to Baum, “which is pretty wonderful and wild.”
Sixty-five people contributed to the new cookbook, which Baum referred to as a “labor of love.”
“My mom and Tom (Wirt) are the foundation I stand on for what they built,” she said. “And then the team we have here of potters and gallery workers, you don’t do any of this alone. It really is dedicated to everybody who’s done it over the years. The dedication in the book says, for the coyotes who lit the flame and the ones who keep it burning, thank you from the bottom of our hearts and pots.”
Clay Coyote has a 12-month plan to celebrate with multiple events planned such as, tasting events, cooking classes, open houses and Baum plans on collecting more recipes in the meantime.
