Food & Wine USA - (10)October 2020

ONE OF THE MOST REWARDING THINGS I’ve

done this year is plant a container garden

that has yielded way more than the toma-

toes and herbs I bargained for this spring.

Among its many dividends, the garden pos-

sesses serious morale-boosting properties.

It also makes a fine place to take a work call.

Slightly farther afield of late, last month

my neighbor’s gargantuan brown turkey

fig tree gave me more fruit than I could

brandy and jar. On a recent hike near a

friend’s lake house, I happened upon a skil-

let’s worth of chanterelle mushrooms for a

sauté. An early-morning fishing trip on

Apalachicola Bay in Florida filled a cooler

with sea trout. Dredged and then fried in

peanut oil, the fish yielded more than

enough fillets to feed two families at a beach

house rental.

For us cooks, what’s better than a harvest? A bounty of ingredients grown, gathered, foraged,

or fished represents peak luxury, especially now when so many of us remain close to home.

The generosity of the natural world, the workers who farm it, and the hosts who set the table

with its bounty give life to this fall wine issue. We’ve filled these pages with inspiration for the

cooking season ahead, including stories, recipes, and more than enough wine pairings to carry

you into the holidays.

If you haven’t already had the pleasure, please meet Alexander Smalls, the dapper bon vivant,

cookbook author, and restaurateur, whose dinner parties and booming baritone laugh are the

stuff of Harlem legend. In “To Dine, with Love” (p. 92), writer Osayi Endolyn explains why

you’d be wise never to turn down an invitation to dine at Smalls’ table. New York City–based

photographer Kelly Marshall documented the occasion with socially distanced portraits of the

host’s guests and shot the cover recipe of Smalls’ Carolina Fish, Shrimp, and Okra Stew with

Black Rice (recipe p. 99).

Over in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, farmer and artist Clare Carver and Brian Marcy, her

winemaker husband, celebrate the end of the grape harvest with friends and staff in “One Big

Table” (p. 70). You’ll want to dog-ear the Crackling Coppa Roast recipe (p. 78) and pair it with

a bottle of 2018 Yamhill-Carlton Pinot Noir from the winery.

In “Harvest Meals” (p. 80), Maria Helm Sinskey invites us into her Napa kitchen to cook what

she and her winemaking friends around the world make when the last of the year’s grapes

have been picked and pressed. Sinskey, a 1996 F&W Best New Chef, may well be the best gardener-

cook in all of California, and her husband, Robert, makes some of my favorite skin-contact

white wines.

Happy cooking to you this fall, no matter how many people will grace your table. Be well,

and stay strong.

From the

Home Office

All Hail

the Harvest

THE FULL PLATE

If you tuned into the Food

& Wine Classic at Home in

July, you know that food

personality and restaura-

teur Ayesha Curry makes

an expert banana fritter

and her own vanilla extract.

You can find more family-

friendly recipes in The Full

Plate, her second book,

and also in Sweet July, a

new magazine she

launched earlier this year

with Meredith, our parent

company. Watch her saber

a Champagne bottle on

Instagram @ayeshacurry,

and stay tuned for the

end of the video.

PLANT POWER

When planning my garden,

I called culinary garden

design expert Sara

Gasbarra (saragasbarra

.com) for advice, and she

turned me on to Fox Farm

liquid fertilizers, which

keep my soil enriched and

my vegetables growing.

foxfarm.com

RISE UP

Fact: There would be no

American cuisine without

the 400-plus years of

contributions of Black

cooks. Chef Marcus

Samuelsson’s long-

awaited cookbook, The

Rise: Black Cooks and

the Soul of American

Food, profiles the next

generation of Black chefs

and creators shaping

America’s culinary future.

We cannot recommend

this book highly enough.

OMY

There are only so many

hands of Uno one dad can

play. Lately, my daughters

and I have been coloring

posters from Omy, a

French company that

makes zany city scenes.

Look carefully for the hot

dog carts and taco trucks.

omy-maison.com

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or call 1-800-333-6569.

HUNTER LEWIS

@NOTESFROMACOOK

[email protected]

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10 OCTOBER 2020 photography by RAMONA ROSALES