Food & Wine June 2021

2019 ELK COVE WILLAMETTE VALLEY PINOT GRIS ($19) I poured this scintillating, peachy Oregon Pinot Gris for our virtual Food & Wine Classic at Home event in early May. Winemaker Adam Campbell—one of the Willamette Valley’s top talents—hits a home run with this sustainably grown white. 2018 ALBERT BICHOT DOMAINE DE ROCHEGRÈS MOULIN-À-VENT ($23) Early summer is perfect for lightly chilled reds, and cru Beaujolais definitely serves that need. This one, from a notable Burgundy name, has vivid black cherry–strawberry flavors and a touch of black pepper. JEFFERSON’S STRAIGHT RYE WHISKEY FINISHED IN COGNAC CASKS ($70) Trey Zoeller has a deft touch with surprising cask finishes. This svelte, spicy rye gains a subtle lemon oil–honey note from nine months in Cognac casks—it’s a fine sipping whiskey for a summer evening.…

The Way of Wood IN THE OUTDOOR KITCHEN of his home in St. Helena, California, Napa winemaker Chris Phelps set a bundle of dried grapevine cuttings on top of a small wood fire. The long canes, remnants of the previous year’s harvest from his friends at Opus One, caught fire and burned intensely for a few minutes before collapsing into finger-length coals. Phelps raked them into a pile, positioned a grate over the embers, and placed four rib eyes on to cook. His son Josh handed over a pan of chopped shallots melted in olive oil and butter, which Chris spooned over the meat. I sat down at the table in the backyard garden with three generations of the Phelps family, and we passed platters of food. The coals gave the beef…

ONE OF OUR FAVORITE ways to meet summer’s high temps? Fighting fire with fire—specifically, with our favorite spicy condiments. Mix two and you might discover a crave-worthy combination for your next cookout. No matter where your journey takes you, it’s going to be a spicy, flavorful ride. 1. ME’S WAY CHILI SAUCE Deputy Editor Melanie Hansche’s favorite Vietnamese-style chile sauce is tempered by sweetness and brings heat and glorious funk in equal measure, thanks to anchovies and fried garlic. ($26, meswayllc.com) 2. SCHWERTER GERMAN HONEY CHILI MUSTARD Schwerter has been in the mustard game since 1845, and their chile-honey offering shines in tuna salad or spooned into soy sauce to enjoy with steamed pork dumplings. ($9, formaggiokitchen.com) 3. ZWÏTA MILD HARISSA Brothers Mansour and Karim Arem created Zwïta harissa to do the Tunisian staple justice in…

NO ONE TELLS YOU THIS in premarital counseling, and it gets short shrift in literary and cinematic romance, but after finances, kid-having, and possibly religion (if that’s your bag), alignment on a household ice strategy is the greatest harbinger of a long-lasting partnership. A dear friend’s fiancé just surprised her with an Opal Nugget Ice Maker, and I am confident that those crazy kids are gonna make it. Upon initial inspection of my now-husband’s freezer (I wasn’t being creepy; I was making cocktails for his friends), I was delighted to discover that his ice trays were filled to a reasonable level; over the course of the night, he even dispatched a guest to the nearby bodega to pick up an additional bag in case our frozen supplies waned. Swoon. As we…

I DIDN’T THINK I NEEDED a new grill. When it comes to cooking out, I’m committed to the old-school ways of doing things—the delicious flavor imparted from cooking over wood coals is the whole reason I love grilling. (For more on that, see “The F&W Guide to Cooking with Wood,” p. 80.) But then I learned about the Spark One grill, a new-age charcoal-and-electric grill that promised the convenience and ease of turning a knob and, just minutes later, cooking outside over preheated charcoal. Intrigued, I knew I had to give it a try. Spark Grills founder Ben West used to design fuel-efficient cookstoves for developing economies, and that work informed this grill’s technology. In this case, a proprietary charcoal “Briq” delivers the same convenience of a typical gas grill, but…

WHETHER YOU’RE CALLING IT A BBQ, get-together, or just “firing up the grill,” a cookout is a staple in the South. As a Black girl growing up in the gummy heat of Southwest Georgia, cookouts happened on a whim and on different levels: a little something with immediate family and a neighbor, “on the yard” in college when fraternity boys needed to sell tickets to a party, the Vacation Bible School church cookout, and the top-tier cookout, aka the family reunion. I have conducted decades of research on cookout etiquette and its significance to Black folks. Cookouts mark time, people, and space. We take record of who attends and who is no longer with us. We pull out dominoes, or “bones,” and worn-in cards for spades, bid whist, or tonk. Food…