| | | | | 03/24/2018 | Jerez, Spain In my opinion, the best way to see Europe is by renting a car. It's less romantic than getting a Eurorail pass riding the rails, sure, but the upsides are hard to beat. It gets you off the beaten path, through picturesque small towns and into the uncanny weirdness of European gas station food—truckers drinking espresso! And most importantly, you can take whatever detours present themselves. Last month, my girlfriend and I scored a dirt cheap flight and used that as the impetus for a week-long Iberian road trip. We tooled around in a (surprisingly affordable) little Audi hatchback across Lisbon's massive suspension bridges, through the vineyards and bodegas of the sherry triangle around Jerez, and down the grand boulevards of Madrid. And while we hadn't originally planned to stop in Spain's Jamon Iberico country in Huelva, the opportunity presented itself and it was just a short detour, so we figured why not? It was (perhaps unsurprisingly) the highlight of the trip. We walked around the dehesa, the unique landscape where the free-ranging pigs graze on acorns that gives them all of that delicious, well-integrated fat. Then we took a tour of the bodega of Cinco Jotas, one of the oldest and most sought-after producers. There are a lot of rules and rituals around making and serving true Jamon Iberico de bellota, but the proof is in the pudding: the ham is just indescribably good, deeply rich with an almost cheese-like savory funk to it. It's the world's greatest cured meat. And it would have been really, really hard to get to on the train. —Chris Cohen, senior editor | | | Charleston, South Carolina One of our favorite partnerships of the year is with the folks at Charleston Wine + Food, a festival that happens each March and brings an incredible roster of food folks, wine and spirits producers, and chefs from all over the world into the prettiest city in the south. In between festivities like a lowcountry fish fry at Bowens Island and chef Mike Lata's (from The Ordinary and Fig) live-music dinner on a local boat dock, we snuck in a (second) lunch at Leon's Oyster Shop and late-night double-stacked cheeseburgers at McCrady's Tavern. We left equal parts full—and hungry for next year. —Stacy Adimando, executive editor | | | | | New York, New York This month, I started testing recipes for a Thai cookbook. The project is leading me deep into Manhattan's Chinatown on the regs, in search of Thai fish sauce, obscure cuts of pork, chilis, noodles, and all manner of Asian greens. I did some testing for Andy Ricker's book, The Drinking Food of Thailand, last year, so I didn't walk into the project unprepared. When it came time to blacken dozens of puya chilis in a dry wok for phrik phon khua–a task I had already suffered through last time, I opened all 2 of my studio apartment windows. I cranked the fans up to high, put on my glasses, and tied a vinegar-soaked rag over my nose and mouth like I was walking into a riot, figuring if it works for tear gas, it might help with chili smoke. It doesn't. Within 15 minutes, my brave taste-testers, the cat, and I were all coughing and sneezing uncontrollably, all in the name of science and tasty, spicy noodles. Does anyone out there know the New York zoning laws on installing an industrial hood vent in a residential rental kitchen? I also mixed up a batch of naem–sour sausage with pig skin, garlic, and green Thai chilies. The nitrate-free mixture is wrapped in plastic and left to ferment at a tropical 95° for 36 hours. I'm pretty sure my culinary school food safety instructor, wherever she may be, felt her blood run cold that day, but my pals and I were just fine scarfing down the tangy, garlicy meat with sticky rice and sweaty bottles of Singha. —Kat Craddock, test kitchen manager | | | Jalisco, Mexico Blue agave is everywhere in Jalisco. Even the airport at Guadalajara is surrounded in swathes of the sharp cerulean spades. This is where tequila was born, and out of the hundreds of types of agave, only the blue variety can be made into something truly called “tequila.” It’s named after a dormant volcano that erupted once 200,000 years ago and completely transformed the existing landscape. Millennia later, the rough igneous rock is now a supple soil responsible for all the nuance of flavor present in a bottle of tequila. On a clear day, gazing off into the mountains, you can see patches of blue separate themselves from the dusty green, climbing upward from the valleys, shifting in hue as the sun arcs across the sky. —Alex Testere, associate editor | | | | | Buenos Aires, Argentina Buenos Aires is exploding with color during the summer. Trees drip pink flowers onto the ground (this tree is called palo borracho, which means drunk stick and is my favorite plant now), roses and flowers bloom everywhere, and the parks are so vividly green it's easy to forget you're in a city. But one of my favorite places to find its color is on buildings and in alleys. Graffiti is everywhere. From simple scribbles to murals that take up entire building faces, there's no shortage of really amazing art to look at. So head to a kiosk and grab an alfajor (or two, especially if it's Jorgito), and take a walk up and down every street. —Katherine Whittaker, associate digital editor | | | Brooklyn, New York I live in Manhattan and rarely ever go out of the borough for a bite. (Rookie mistake, I know.) But I recently visited Fresh Off the Boat (FOB) in Brooklyn—one of my first ventures into the borough’s culinary scene. I always thought that the only good Filipino food in New York was in Woodside, Queens’s “Little Manila.” This restaurant proved me wrong. The ambiance reminded me of home, with its Spanish-inspired interiors, and Filipino colonial wares. It felt like I was sitting in a restaurant somewhere in an Ayala mall. The defining dish that determines whether a Pinoy restaurant is good, for many Filipinos, is sisig. And FOB definitely did not disappoint. Fatty, meaty, crispy, and chewy all at the same time—the dish tasted like home. Chatting with my friends and enjoying our shared food, suddenly I felt very comfortable in this unfamiliar neighborhood. —Jasmine P. Ting, production assistant | | | |
