Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2023 i Food & Wine

2021 FEUDI DI SAN GREGORIO GRECO DI TUFO ($29) Such a pleasure—and often findable at less than its suggested retail price—this minerally, floral white comes from one of the Campania region’s best wineries. Feudi also has a terrific Michelin-starred restaurant on-site, should you ever be vacationing around Naples. Visit the winery, then have lunch—it’s a great day trip. 2021 G.D. VAJRA CLARÉ J.C. LANGHE NEBBIOLO ($25) Feel like a wildly drinkable red that just happens to be Nebbiolo from a top Barolo producer? I love this brilliantly crisp, juicy wine from the Vaira family. It drinks almost like Beaujolais, yet is somehow unmistakably Piedmontese. I first had it in Rome this spring and plan to drink it all summer long here in the U.S. YANGCHON CHUNGJU ($30) Chungju, or…

IF YOU DISLIKE HAVING YOUR freezer space taken up by an automatic ice maker or precariously balanced ice cube trays, a good countertop ice maker is the solution. That’s why we researched and tested 15 popular ice makers to find the best, which can make restaurant-quality ice at the press of a button. Our testers put the machines through their paces with two tests: ice production (how long it took to make one batch of ice, how big the ice was, consistency, and pace) and noise levels (from the motor whirring to the sound of the ice dropping). Testers also took note of extra features, self-cleaning options, and water tank capacity. Read on for our favorites. BEST OVERALL IGLOO AUTOMATIC SELF-CLEANING COUNTERTOP ICE MAKER MACHINE ($300, AMAZON.COM) There are many reasons…

I WASN’T EXPECTING TO FIND one of the best bread loaves of my life in Vienna, a city better known by most tourists for its coffeehouses and its Sacher tortes. But the one I bit into on my first visit to Joseph Brot (joseph.co.at), baked with einkorn, spelt, and amaranth, delivered impressive chew and a full-bodied bouquet of honey sweetness and grassy notes. I turned down an offering of local butter—with bread like this, there was no need for it. The person behind the bakery’s remarkable offerings is owner Josef Weghaupt, a self-described flavor-obsessed “sourdough maniac.” His hearty, elegant breads are made with mostly heirloom whole wheat, malted and sprouted grains, and a cocktail of levains. I have baked and tasted hundreds of loaves in my life, and I have…

Take It Outside “INVITING SOMEONE TO YOUR CARNE ASADA is a gesture of love,” Bricia Lopez writes in Asada: The Art of Mexican-Style Grilling, a new cookbook cowritten with Javier Cabral. Their cover story (“Welcome to the Asada,” p. 66) is your invitation to Lopez’s Los Angeles backyard for the ultimate cookout. In her kitchen, there’s a pot of black beans slowly simmering on the stove and flap steaks marinating in the fridge. Bottles of mezcal from Matatlán, where her father was born, and Santa Catarina Minas, her current obsession, stand ready at the bar to spike a fizzy lemonade. Out on the deck, Lopez grills chicken thighs, tinged vibrant red with achiote and made sweet and sour with orange juice, over the indirect heat of banked charcoal embers, while…

THE SUMMER I TURNED NINE YEARS OLD was the first time I visited Jamaica, a place my family still calls home more than 50 years after moving to the U.S. When I arrived, the island hadn’t changed much from when my parents left. The streetlight was a brand-new addition to the hilly parish of Hanover (where my great-grandparents lived), and even with that lone lamp, the skies were more full of stars than anything my New York City–born–and–raised eyes had ever seen. One of my strongest memories from that first trip was being introduced to crayfish (or crawfish, as it’s known in the U.S.) and peppa shrimp, packed into clear plastic bags and inevitably devoured in the car as we careened along the bumpy roads with my grandfather behind the…

SOM TAM I’M ALWAYS MESMERIZED by the rhythmic sounds and fragrant aromas from my Thai grandmother’s mortar and pestle. It’s one of my earliest culinary memories: Her pounding and grinding whole spices, coriander root, garlic, or herbs in her favorite stone apparatus signaled that a luscious curry paste or sauce was underway. She insists those flavors can’t be matched—not without using that ancient, reliable kitchen tool. And she’s right. Dating back to the Stone Age, the mortar, a bowl- or cup-shaped vessel, and the pestle, a clublike utensil, are two of the earliest innovations in food prep. Used in tandem, they pulverize ingredients into pulp, powder, or paste, releasing essential oils and flavor. Designs and materials have evolved to fit different cuisines and ingredient textures and sizes, but the function…

IT’S WIDELY EXPECTED that pouring a beer over ice and serving it to someone will at the very least get you the side-eye and at worst, a beer dumped over your head. But add a dash of hot sauce and a squeeze of lime to that ice-filled glass? Now we’re talking. That’s no mere beer—that’s a cocktail. And for me, a spritzy, subtly bitter beer cocktail signifies that summer’s here. You could make one with your hazy, super-hoppy imperial IPA, but … nah. Go simple. The Champagne of Beers, for example, Miller High Life, is a perfect beer-cocktail base. (Though admittedly, any good pilsner or lager will do.) While classic beer cocktails like a michelada or a shandy can handle more potent brews, at its modest 4.6% ABV, beers like…

CARNE ASADA IS NOT JUST A TACO. In millions of backyards across Southern California, an asada represents more than just meat. It means family, friends, great music, cold drinks, and good times—all centered on the promise of juicy grilled meat and all the fixings. In a city like Los Angeles, where the taco is a way of life, backyard asada culture is as respected as church on Sundays. Inviting someone to your carne asada is a gesture of love, respect, generosity, and friendship. It’s a way of welcoming you and feeding you like family. An asada can be as intimate or as big as you’d like it to be. You don’t need to celebrate anything but life to gather loved ones and throw an asada. I’ll never forget hosting my…

When I think of Hungary, my husband’s homeland, I think of the stone fruits that bookend our late-summer trips to the village of his childhood. Here, on the plains of central Hungary at the foot of the Bakony Mountains, fruit is the song of our summers. Platters of dinnye (melon) and clusters of szőlő (wine grapes) are the melody that carries through a decade-long renovation of our 300-year-old house, next door to my in-laws. Last summer, we came to finish the guesthouse and to tame the wild plum trees, whose branches are so heavy they scrape the soil. We harvested inky blackberries and tended land nourished by millennia of livestock. We ate stone fruit raw by the fistful: meggyes, luscious Balaton cherries; őszibarack, fist-sized peaches; szilva, sour plums in every…

THE PARTY SUB IS, objectively, the wackiest of all the sandwiches. We’re talking about those enormous, fills-the-entire-table, six-foot hoagies that can feed up to 20 people. The return of bar mitzvahs, baby showers, and office functions have paved the way for a party sub boom—and sandwich shops and delis are meeting that need, incorporating their distinctive personalities into novelty macro-sandwiches. The thing that makes a party sub a party sub is the extra-long bread, and baking a six-foot roll requires a big-enough oven and a whole team of bakers. “It takes a party to make a party sub roll,” explains Nora Allen, executive head baker and partner at Mel The Bakery in New York City—she has built gargantuan sandwiches at several places during her career. “You need at least…

EVERY TIME I CUT FRESH HERBS, I marvel at the scent. I see the same delight from dinner guests when I hand them scissors and ask them to bring me herbs from the garden while I cook. That experience often leads them to start their own herb gardens at home. Herbs are easy to grow, even for first-time gardeners, and they give you the biggest return for the smallest investment of time, effort, and cost. They can thrive in your backyard garden or in the smallest of spaces—such as in pots on a windowsill—and are fresher and more potent than anything you’ll find at a grocery store or farmers market. (A little goes a long way, too. Two teaspoons of fresh tarragon, for instance, is all you need to flavor…

ONE of my earliest memories involves my father coming home from the grocery store in our neighborhood in Phoenix, Arizona, with a pint of what he assumed was plain, full-fat yogurt for our family to enjoy alongside meat and vegetable stew. After opening the tub at the table, the three of us exchanged sideways glances: This doesn’t smell right. Once we determined that it wasn’t expired or damaged in some way, we quickly realized what had happened: My father, assuming that American grocery stores (like those in Turkey, where we’re from) carried unflavored yogurt in the large white tubs that filled the dairy aisle, had purchased vanilla yogurt. It quickly became a running joke in our family, asking one another if vanilla-flavored yogurt soup was on the menu. My father’s…