Food & Wine

what ray’s pouring now

2020 ARGIOLAS IS ARGIOLAS VERMENTINO ($22) I served this Sardinian white with shrimp risotto; it was a huge hit. Tasting it is like being splashed with cool, refreshing flavors of white peach and citrus—if you don’t feel like cooking, I suggest drinking a glass and jumping in a pool. 2018 PIETRACUPA GRECO DI TUFO ($30) I drank the 2005 vintage of this Southern Italian white at Eataly’s Serra by Birreria restaurant in NYC in the early summer; it was honeyed and complex, a surprise at that age. The current 2018 vintage is lovely, too—floral and minerally, ideal for raw oysters. 2018 BLUE FARM RIVERBED ESTATE FARMED PINOT NOIR ($95) Anne Moller-Racke makes stunning wines from her tiny estate in Carneros, like this complex red with scents of black tea and wild raspberries. “I know this…

editor’s letter

All the Veg FACT: WE SHOULD ALL be eating less meat for the health of our bodies and our planet. But I’m not here to yuck your yum, so let’s focus on what’s in the pages of this special issue rather than what’s not. Fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds offer infinite variety, utility, and nutrition, whether you’re eating them on the vegan tasting menu at a world-renowned restaurant or a simple spread in your own backyard. Fresh produce, especially now, during high summer, empowers a world of good cooking. Consider this Plant Issue a prompt to inspire your meatless cooking in the months to come, from the gloriously messy cheesesteak hoagie made with plant-based protein (see p. 70) from Atlanta restaurateur Pinky Cole and Philadelphia native Derrick Hayes to the sorrel stewed…

imagination takes root

OPEN A BOX OF PRODUCE from Girl & Dug Farm, and you’ll be transported to a world as whimsical as Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. But instead of Everlasting Gobstoppers and Scrumdiddlyumptious bars, there’s Porcukepine, a pulpy African fruit with orange spikes and neon-green flesh, and Squashini, a Korean cucurbit grown inside of a bag, which keeps it small and gives it a snappy texture. “We’ve always got to have something that others don’t,” says Aaron Choi, the farm’s founder and owner. The original Girl & Dug Farm, built on land that Choi took over from his parents in 2009, is located in San Marcos, California. In March 2020, Choi opened a second farm in Portland, Oregon. Although he’s been supplying California chefs like Jeremy Fox and Nyesha Arrington for years, Choi launched…

pro(duce) tips

Zwilling Kitchen Shears JULIA TURSHEN, AUTHOR OF SIMPLY JULIA “I use these for all sorts of tasks, many of them vegetable-related–they’re not cheap, but they’ll last forever. From snipping greens off of root vegetables, like beets and carrots, to clipping herbs and other leaves in my garden, and even just chopping kimchi straight in the jar it sits in, I use these scissors every single day. They’re also great for cutting things like arugula in its plastic clamshell container— no need to dirty a knife or board!” ($60, zwilling.com) Breville Juice Fountain CHEF ALAN DELGADO, XILONEN, NYC “Vegetable juicers allow you to cook vegetables in their own juice, which doubles down on the flavor. At the restaurant, we braise our carrots in their own juice for our carrot tostada. By doing so, it reinforces that…

you’ve got mail

FOOD NEWSLETTERS used to revolve around weeknight recipes and updates from your neighborhood bistro. But lately, they’ve evolved into a medium where emerging food writers shape their critical voices and where veterans refine their brands by self-publishing. Soleil Ho, the restaurant critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, changed the game when she added her weekly newsletter, Bite Curious, to her dining coverage in 2019. “It isn’t always about food,” she says. “The newsletter has been a really wonderful way to fit in stories that don’t typically work in the format of a review.” Ho often uses her newsletter as a platform for essays on topics that range from anti-Asian violence to why bars should have hooks for handbags. “Sometimes I use it to write bigger, more critical pieces. Other times, I…

time capsules

COOKBOOKS ARE pieces of history; they document the palates, rhetoric, photography trends, and even typography of a certain era, and few genres illustrate our cultural evolution as perfectly as the vegetable-focused cookbook. These five, released over the course of the past 40-plus years, not only belong in every home cook’s library but also tell a fascinating tale of how we as a society went from stuffing mushrooms in casseroles to arranging them atop toast. 1977 THE MOOSEWOOD COOKBOOK By Mollie Katzen What started as a tiny restaurant in Ithaca, New York, is now a cornerstone of American plant-based cooking. The first of 13 Moosewood cookbooks is full of charming sketches and was inducted into the James Beard Foundation’s Cookbook Hall of Fame. 1997 VEGETARIAN COOKING FOR EVERYONE By Deborah Madison In this no-nonsense, refined 1,400-recipe tome (which was…