Food & Wine March 2022

2019 LOUIS JADOT CHÂTEAU DES JACQUES MOULIN-À-VENT ($28) Beaujolais’ most substantial wines come from Moulin-à-Vent; they’re delicious on release but able to age as well. This black cherry–rich red was terrific with arroz con pato from NYC’s superb Contento restaurant. 2020 ZUCCARDI CONCRETO MALBEC ($40) Sebastián Zuccardi is a force in Argentinean wine despite his fairly young age—he’s at the front of a growing movement to make Malbec less oaky and super-ripe, and this wine is emblematic of his approach: savory and fresh, with bright plum and floral notes. 2019 QUINTODECIMO GIALLO D’ARLES GRECO DI TUFO ($50) I drank a bottle of this brilliant Southern Italian white in Rome in November, and it’s stayed with me ever since: complex, lingering, stony yet luscious at the same time, with stone fruit and honeysuckle notes. It isn’t…

Slice of Life SHOULD I GO TO CULINARY SCHOOL or work in restaurants? I get asked this question a lot by young cooks and career-changers looking to create their own path in the food world. I was at the same crossroads many years ago and ultimately chose restaurants, thinking I’d cook professionally for a year and then translate that experience into a writing gig. How wrong my timeline was. Within an hour on the job as a line cook, I realized that cooking was going to be a lifelong journey. My journey recently led me on a quest to make better pizza at home. What I learned, through far too many blah pies, is that any pizza curriculum must start with good dough—with how to mix it, ferment it, and shape it. My…

WHEN I MOVED into a small apartment in a large city, I faced a conundrum: I wanted to compost to reduce my food waste, but there was no residential composting program in my neighborhood, and I didn’t want to entice critters to the building’s backyard with attractive food scraps. (And yes, I do make stock—but not that much stock!) So began my yearslong relationship with the bucket I’d keep in my freezer and fill with vegetable trimmings, chicken bones, and leftovers, dutifully dragging it to the farmers market compost pile when it filled up. I was very excited to learn of the Vitamix FoodCycler FC-50, an at-home “food recycler” roughly the size of an automatic drip coffee maker that breaks down food waste into fertilizer in a fraction of the…

REGARDLESS OF THE FACT that my idea of a perfect vacation is Montreal in January (and that I can only reach inner peace during scarf-and-sweater weather), even my cold soul longs for that two-week stretch of August when the farmers market looks like a treasure chest, with bright heirloom tomatoes glittering at its center. To bring that feeling into the cooler months of the year, I turn to tomato candles, which I’ve found to be more effective at lifting the spirit than any light-therapy lamp or weighted blanket. Despite its niche inspiration, this is a surprisingly popular and complex category of candle, with fragrances ranging from floral and fruity to herbaceous and downright delicious. —OSET BABÜR-WINTER FOOD STYLING: TORIE COX; PROP STYLING: AUDREY DAVIS…

TO MY MIND, there’s no lovelier sound than the sizzle of kalbi on a Korean barbecue grill. Now, thanks to Asian supermarket chains like H Mart and Zion Market, it’s easy to re-create the restaurant experience at home with ready-made banchan (traditional side dishes) and pre-marinated meats. First, however, you’ll need a KBBQ-style grill and a few other accoutrements to turn your dining table into a setup that rivals that of Chosun Galbee in Los Angeles or Cote Korean Steakhouse in NYC and Miami. IWATANI CB-P-Y3 GRILL PLATE Although a heavier square grill plate will get the job done, this 12-inch round barbecue plate comes with a restaurant-style removable handle and slots that allow for drainage of the grease that can build up over the course of cooking meat Korean barbecue–style. To…

PICTURE THIS: You’re at a restaurant, and the plate brought out by the staff is not what you ordered, or it includes ingredients you cannot eat. Thinking of pointing it out, your brain begins to skip through the food chain: If you decide to say something, will it embarrass or frustrate the waiter? Will the restaurant lose money? What happens to this food? Will it get thrown away? This arm of restaurant politesse—the precarious dance between guest and staff—doesn’t have an explicit code of conduct. But there’s a fine line between speaking up when something is wrong and being an entitled nightmare. 1 SPEAK UP FOR YOURSELF For some, sending back food isn’t just a matter of dissatisfaction—it’s a necessity. “I have sent back food [that I couldn’t eat] and hated myself…