Table of contents for August 2021 in Food & Wine

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…

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.…

IF IT WEREN’T FOR THE PESKY MATTERS of physics and insects, I’d wear pieces of fresh fruit all the time. Mother Nature has a flair for the fabulous, and some of her most audacious work is in the edible realm. Consider the jewel-like arils of a halved pomegranate, the kiss-POW! color pop of a ripened cherry, a banana’s sunny perma-grin. When I was working on my MFA in metalsmithing in the mid-1990s, I’d safety-pin plastic cherries and rubber lemon slices to my outfits, but in the years since, I’ve come to obsessively appreciate and collect jewelry crafted by artists who clearly share my lust for wearable fruit. Here are just a few of my favorites.…

VEGGIE BURGERS WE’VE COME A LONG WAY from the freezer aisle of the 1980s. Veggie burgers are no longer monotonous gray-brown pucks—they’re fresh, vibrant, and satisfyingly savory. As a longtime vegetarian who attended a culinary school focused on plant-based cooking, I’ve not only cooked and consumed hundreds of these patties, but I actually love them. With store-bought options now ranging from plant-based “meat” to black bean– and green pea–based patties, veggie burgers certainly have range. But the secret to the very best ones is texture. A bit of crunch, just enough moisture and tenderness, and the right balance of both in each bite make for a burger everyone at the barbecue can enjoy. These veggie burgers are filled with whole vegetables and grains, and they boast plenty of complex flavor.…

I GREW UP IN MONTERREY, Mexico, with a backyard filled with more than 200 nopales, or cactus plants. But as a kid, I wasn’t a fan. My mother loved nopales—she even ate them raw and used them in smoothies—but I wasn’t convinced. “I don’t like nopales; they’re slimy,” I remember complaining to her. It wasn’t until much later, after I had moved away to New York, met my husband, and had his family’s grilled nopales, that I finally learned to appreciate the spiny villain of my childhood. My sisters-in-law, who grew up in Puebla and are great home cooks, taught me a trick that has made me love nopales as much as my mother does. Before cooking them on a comal or a skillet on the grill, they cut the…

P. 62 VEG OUT! P. 65 JACKFRUIT “CARNITAS” TACOS P. 66 LOADED PITA NACHOS WITH LENTIL CHILI AND FETA QUESO P. 68 KACHUMBER GAZPACHO P. 70 DINKIES CHEEZESTEAK P. 73 EGGPLANT BRACIOLA P. 74 HOT HONEY–CARROT FLATBREADS WITH BASIL CHERMOULA P. 76 TOFU BONANZA! P. 78 TOFU SKIN STIR-FRY P. 79 TOFU BHURJI P. 80 CRISPY FRIED TOFU SANDWICH P. 81 PON DE RING (MOCHI-TOFU DOUGHNUTS) P. 82 COOK, GARDENER, GUARDIAN P. 92 XENI ATAPAKUA (THREE-SEED PIPIÁN WITH SORREL) P. 94 PLANT-POWERED PASTRY! P. 97 BLACKBERRY CARDAMOM CUPCAKES WITH LEMON FROSTING P. 98 SOUR CHERRY AND BLACK PEPPER PIE P. 100 DOUBLE-CHOCOLATE RYE COOKIES P. 103 VEGAN VANILLA BEAN ICE CREAM…

EVERY WEEK, IMELDA CAMPOS SEBASTIÁN walks a mile from her pine cabin on the rocky northern slope of the Cerro San Marcos and down into the center of Cherán, an Indigenous Purhépecha community in the west-central state of Michoacán in Mexico, to broadcast her radio show “El arte del bienvivir”—The Art of Living Well. For an hour, she shares her generational knowledge of traditional medicine and foodways over the airwaves of Radio Fogata, 101.7 FM: the utility of sorrel for detoxifying the liver, how fava beans can strengthen the joints, the lujo (luxury, a favorite word, usually uttered with a smile that reads as a wink) of a simple soup jeweled with chard and carrots, a pale green chile güero as its solitaire. Barely five feet tall with long, gray-streaked…

“We ask ourselves every year, ‘Do we still want to do this for another year?’ And for 50 years, we’ve said yes.”—ALICE WATERS “AT THE BEGINNING, I WAS TERRIFIED,” says Alice Waters, reflecting on the first few years of Chez Panisse, her iconic restaurant in Berkeley. “We changed [our menu] every night. That has kept us creative.” Waters, an early champion of local sourcing and sustainable farming, helped to define the hallmarks of California cuisine. Since opening Chez Panisse in 1971, Waters’ impact has expanded far beyond the restaurant itself, inspiring a new generation of chefs to embrace seasonal, ingredient-driven cooking and encouraging diners to think more critically about where their food comes from. Waters likes to compare each Chez Panisse milestone to growing up. “At 10 years old,…

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…

Tomato Pie Bars ACTIVE 20 MIN; TOTAL 2 HR 50 MIN; SERVES 6 TO 8 Food Editor Josh Miller uses crushed saltine crackers to give these bars a crispy crust; curry powder brings a mild, savory heat to the cheesy filling. 1½ sleeves saltine crackers, coarsely crushed¾ cup unsalted butter (6 oz.), melted4 oz. Parmesan cheese, grated (about 1 cup), divided2 large egg yolks, beaten10 oz. aged sharp cheddar cheese, grated (about 2½ cups)3 Tbsp. mayonnaise1 Tbsp. minced chipotle chile in adobo sauce1 tsp. curry powder, divided½ tsp. black pepper, divided1 pt. mixed cherry tomatoes (about 2½ cups)1 tsp. kosher saltFresh basil leaves, for garnish 1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Pulse crackers in a food processor until crumbly with some pea-size pieces remaining, 6 to 7 pulses, to yield about…

FROSTY BOTTLES WHITE WINES THAT CAN STAND THE COLD WHEN IT’S HOT, you want your wine cold—but how cold, really? A sommelier will tell you that white wines served straight from the fridge (about 35°F to 38°F) are too cold because at those temperatures, aromas and flavors are muted. But let’s face it: When it’s blazingly hot outside, a 55°F glass of wine, which is more or less the ideal temperature for rich Chardonnays and white Burgundies, just isn’t all that refreshing. So feel free to break the rules. Don’t necessarily dump ice cubes in your $5,000-a-bottle Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Montrachet (unless you want to see your friendly F&W wine editor’s head explode), but do go right ahead and serve wines the way you like them. Keep this in…

THE JACK OF ALL TRADES JOCELYN RAMIREZ Cookbook Author and Chef Todo Verde, Los Angeles When Jocelyn Ramirez discovered that canned jackfruit could be the perfect vehicle to marry Mexican flavors and plant-based cooking, a light bulb went off. “I wanted to be that bridge for people who were eating street tacos throughout the city of Los Angeles,” she says, laughing. “I was like, ‘How do I get this to taste like carnitas?’” By using the cumin, chile flakes, and salt that many Mexican home cooks already have in their pantries, Ramirez capitalized on the pulled pork texture of jackfruit to make plant-based cooking seem more approachable to her community—one delicious “carnitas” taco at a time. Jackfruit “Carnitas” Tacos ACTIVE 50 MIN; TOTAL 1 HR 15 MIN; SERVES 4 Tart,…

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,…

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…

IT’S MORNING IN BUSHWICK, Brooklyn, and Yemi Amu of Oko Farms is tending to her crops as her next-door neighbor releases his pigeons from their coop. “They never bother us,” she says of the birds taking flight. “It’s the sparrows that are the problem.” The smaller birds get into the tall stalks of rice, sorghum, and millet growing on the farm. She wraps the tops with netting to protect them, but she has to stay vigilant. As the pigeons circle overhead, Amu, the farm’s founder and director, carefully examines leaves for insects and feeds the fish that provide fertilizer for the farm: It’s an aquaponics system that cycles water between the plants and a pond filled with shimmering koi fish. The concept of aquaponics can seem intimidating, but to…

DESPITE ITS HUMBLE APPEARANCE, fruit cobbler is the hero of any summer meal. Not only is it nearly effortless, but it’s also endlessly adaptable, accommodating whatever fruit is most glorious at the market and what items you have in your pantry. We’ve created this recipe to work with a variety of summer fruits (see below for options) and a variety of pantry staples to customize the topping to what you have on hand. Swap the mascarpone in the biscuit topping for crème fraîche or sour cream; trade the semolina for fine cornmeal for a more crumbly texture. We’ve tested and tasted nearly every option imaginable, and we guarantee they’re all delicious. Summer Fruit Cobbler With Vanilla-Mascarpone Biscuits ACTIVE 25 MIN; TOTAL 1 HR 55 MIN SERVES 6 TO 8…

WITH OPEN SPACES, fun for every age, and a distinct, delicious sense of place, a farm stay is the perfect antidote to the past year or so of disruption and isolation. And while you could (and should) head for one of the high-end agricultural retreats across the U.S. (the iconic Blackberry Farm in Tennessee, say, or Northern California’s plush-yet-laid-back Farmhouse Inn), there’s luxury of a different sort to be found at rural working farms. It’s good for the soul to immerse yourself among green and growing things as they stretch toward the sun, to wander through fields bursting with color to pick a fat, sun-warmed berry and pop it into your mouth. A weekend at a working farm lets you do all of those things, while you enjoy unique…

Invented in China roughly 2,000 years ago, tofu has been embraced by cultures across Asia and beyond, taking on new forms and flavors along the way. To make tofu, dried soybeans are soaked and then ground and filtered into soy milk. Coagulants cause the soy milk to form curds of plant-powered protein that are turned into different kinds of tofu. The protein-and-water matrix can be endlessly manipulated for a range of textures, amenable to soaking up the flavor of anything you throw at it. “Even though many people think that tofu is super bland, it’s a mighty little ingredient,” says tofu expert and cookbook author Andrea Nguyen, who shared her favorite types of tofu, shown here. If you’re lucky enough to find fresh tofu, try simpler preparations that let its…

HERE’S A UNIVERSAL TRUTH: The better your ingredients are, the better your bake will be. For vegan baking, quality is even more crucial. Ordinarily, dairy, like milk and butter, enhances the texture and flavor of a baked good. When it comes to plant-based versions, the best substitutes are full-fat products (see “Key Ingredients,” p. 97), which give vegan baked goods a tender crumb. When it comes to alternative eggs, use aquafaba, the clear, flavorless liquid at the bottom of a can of chickpeas. Three tablespoons of aquafaba can stand in for one whole egg, acting as the same kind of binding agent. Those are all you’ll need in the way of special ingredients for these crowd-pleasing plant-based pastries. If you’re in the mood for sweet and bright, make the Blackberry-Cardamom Cupcakes…