I got to know Mike Harney when I co-authored his book, The Harney & Sons Guide to Tea. He's fun company, as well as refreshingly unpretentious when it comes to talking about tea, so I'm looking forward to the tea-tasting class he'll be teaching on July 25 at the International Culinary Center of the French Culinary Institute in NYC. During the first part of the class, Deconstructing Earl Grey, he'll serve samples of the different Chinese and Indian black teas that go into the classic blend, along with its signature bergamot citrus. If all goes according to plan, he'll end the evening with tea cocktails from FCI's own mad scientist, Dave Arnold.

Yes, F&W is back in New York (recovering) after our Classic in Aspen. This year's festival was awesome and action-packed, and there were hundreds of highlights; here are three of mine.

* Best New Chef Party: On Saturday night, our outstanding 2009 BNCs cooked for some 500 guests, who got to vote for their favorite dish via text message. F&W editors loved it all, including Christopher Kostow's roasted corn custard and Vinny Dotolo and Jon Shook's pork belly sliders. (The winner: Nate Appleman, the group's most tech-savvy chef, who launched a successful Facebook campaign for his pork meatballs.)

* Top Chef Quickfire Challenge: On Sunday morning, Season 4 winner Stephanie Izard faced off against Season 5 winner Hosea Rosenberg. They each had help—Izard's sous-chef was star chef Ming Tsai; Rosenberg's was the great Jacques Pépin. At the judging table: Tom Colicchio, Gail Simmons, Dana Cowin and Todd from Florida, who donated $15,000 to charity for that judging seat. Highlights included Tsai handing off his American Express black card (who knew??) as a bribe to Todd, and Rosenberg, who knew about Colicchio's secret passion for gummy bears and added the candies to his melon cocktail. In the end, Rosenberg and Pépin and their lobster with coral butter and Wheaties green tomatoes beat out Izard and Tsai's hangover pizza topped with lobster and a poached egg.

* The After-Parties: You absolutely don't need one more party in Aspen. Still, anyone who can get in eventually finds themselves at the members-only, late-night party at 212 House. Some people hate it, but a lot of good stories start with the phrase, "Oh man, last night, at 212 House...." There's a what-happens-at-212-stays-there mentality; I won't be the one to break the code of silence. But I will say that Colicchio and Joe Bastianich's band, who performed everything from the Steve Miller Band's “The Joker” to Oasis's “Wonderwall,” get better as the night goes on; that there are several notable chefs who hopefully won't see themselves dancing on YouTube; and that our Best New Chefs are as good at doing shots as they are at cooking.

A confession: I often peek through the fences of New York City's community gardens and fantasize about walking among the vines. Last week, I finally got to live out my fantasy at the kickoff event for Woodbridge by Robert Mondavi’s "Giving Through Growing" campaign, which launched yesterday. Held at La Plaza Cultural’s garden on Manhattan's Lower East Side and catered by Outstanding in the Field, the event announced a partnership between the winery and the American Community Gardening Association (ACGA). Woodbridge is helping ACGA by donating a dollar for every e-seed sent from their website this summer (the campaign ends on September 20). The funds will be used to help community gardens around the country expand, and the website will follow their progress and share garden-to-table meals. Now to fulfill my replacement fantasy: another chance to eat Outstanding in the Field's scallop salad with potatoes, green beans and baby fennel. 

You can tell I’m a city mouse here in Aspen—my camera is filled with pictures of Alpine-like wildflowers and animals roasting on spits. Both are rare sites in NYC. Last night, chef José Andrés hosted a party with the Wines of Spain where whole lambs rotated over a slowly-burning fire on the bank of a rushing stream. I must say, it was a beautiful sight. And the sandwiches chef Andrés made with the pulled meat were perfect for soaking up all of that Spanish wine.

Today, Fort Worth, Texas, chef Tim Love served up lamb, goat and venison, all roasted whole over mesquite wood. The key to cooking lean animals like venison over an open fire for so long? Bacon, apparently. Love used the smoky fatty pork to keep the venison juicy. Instead of wine, we ate the smoky meats with Belgian beers. With its sweet richness, Leffe Blond is always one of my favorites, but today, in the heat of the sun (which we’re thousands of feet closer to here in Aspen), the citrusy-spiced Hoegaarden was especially good. Now it’s time to hike off all that meat—and continue to play nature photographer.

I attempted a trifecta my first-ever day at the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen. Here, the highlights:

WINE: I kicked off my day tasting Italy’s most extravagant wines at a tasting led by David Lynch, who recently announced he’s leaving NYC’s the John Dory to become wine director at Quince in San Francisco. Lynch made a passionate case on why Italy’s Ca’ del Bosco Brut “Cuvee Prestige” can hold its own against French Champagne and blew my mind with a 15% alcohol 2003 Le Ragose Amarone della Valpolicella Classico. Star sighting in the seminar: A certain chef in orange clogs who Lynch worked with at Babbo for seven years.

BEER: Texas chef Tim Love pulled an all-nighter in the Hotel Jerome courtyard slow-cooking a deer, goat and lamb for a killer Belgian beer-paired lunch. Master beer sommelier Marc Stroobandt led the crowd through the tasting of Hoegaarden, Stella Artois and Leffe Blonde. Inside gossip: In need of an early-morning, Texas-style pick-me-up, Love requested a shot of ice cold, Crown Royal. Apparently the hotel staff mistook his Texas twang and brought him an ice cold shot of canola oil.

COCKTAILS: Oahu native and cocktail genius Julie Reiner led a rowdy, standing room only seminar on tiki culture and mixed classic tiki drinks including a Zombie, Bermuda Zwizzle, Mai Tai and the Lychee-Lemongrass Fizz featured on her menu at the Flatiron Lounge in NYC. Rumor from the audience: Reiner was shocked and saddened when someone in the audience informed her that Ft. Lauderdale, Florida’s classic tiki bar Mai-Kai is closing.

It may have begun with burgers, but the theme of this year’s Classic is definitely the whole animal. No party is complete without one—or four—roasting on a spit. José Andrés set the bar high yesterday at his party sponsored by the Wines of Spain: Two lambs were turning over coals by the Roaring Fork River (above), while José and his sous chefs used the sliced meat to make some of the best sandwiches I’ve ever tasted. Even the affable Ming Tsai was rendered speechless (below) watching the champion of all things Spanish assemble Dagwood-level works of art: whole baguettes sliced lengthwise, quickly charred on a grill, then slathered with a fresh, rich romesco sauce, juicy chunks of lamb and a healthy sprinkling of fleur de sel, followed by thin slivers of spicy piquillo peppers and crunchy whole Boston lettuce leaves. Forget Aspen—F&W’s offices need to move to Barcelona ahorita. Or as Jean-Claude Szurdak sagely suggested, as he and his compadre Jacques Pépin sampled a few, “José, you really need to open a restaurant."

 

 

4.30 pm Top Chef winner Hosea Rosenberg cruises around Aspen in his jeep.
 
8 pm  One of the festival highlights, the magnum party, kicks off at D-19. That means super-sized bottles of 94 Domaine Leflaive Batard Montrachet on ice and '84 Freemark Abbey Sycamore on the tables (some $20,000 worth of wine is poured), while chef Dena Marino passes out platters of pulled pork sliders.
 
11 pm  Start of super-deluxe Champagne and oyster party at the Little Nell. With extra-large shots of Sombra Mescal, too. Run back and forth between the party and the Little Nell lounge where F&W best new chefs are lounging on couches and the awesome Nancy Silverton is hanging out with her friend Phil Rosenthal (Everyone Loves Raymond's hilarious creator).
 
1.45 am Decide not to check on chef Tim Love's all-night whole-animal roastathon at the Hotel Jerome. Which is a good thing because the following morning there will be stories of Love doing shots of everything from tequila to chilled canola oil.
 

I was thrilled to arrive in Aspen yesterday, a day before the real festivities start—it gave me time to adjust to the high altitude, which left me feeling  a bit  foggy (and very hungry for burgers). By this morning, I felt totally refreshed so F&W’s Emily Kaiser and I headed 12 miles or so outside Aspen to the bucolic Roaring Fork Club for a few hours of fly fishing with the great people behind Napa Valley’s Gamble Family Vineyards, Cliff Lede Vineyards and Coquerel. Both of us were complete novices but thanks to our guide, Steve, we were casting like pros in no time. In fact, we got more casting practice than anything else—in two hours on two different ponds, I got little more than a nibble, and never hooked a fish, even though we could see 12-inch-long trout just below the surface. Perhaps, with the Food & Wine Classic going on just down the road, the fish have gotten as picky as us food editors, and can spot faux meals from a few feet deep.

After braving a mild snowstorm on our drive up from Denver, my colleague Kristin Donnelly and I arrived in Aspen last night for this weekend's Food & Wine Classic. I'm pleased to report that things are off to a burger-ific start, thanks to our dinner at the Ajax Tavern at the Little Nell.  (If only F&W headquarters were in Aspen year-round...) Ajax’s version of the In-N-Out double-double burger was impressively tasty, as were the juicy and ridiculously immense Alaskan king crab legs. The truffle fries almost went perfectly with the 2006 Joseph Drouhin Puligny-Montrachet, though they probably would have been even better with the rich chocolate milkshakes that the kind Ajax servers brought at the end of the night. We slurped them down before dashing back outside. The ominous storm clouds made us consider going back inside to eat a few more burgers, but we decided to call it an early night.

Yesterday, I got a preview of the F&W Classic in Aspen: meeting legendary Italian winemaker Roberto Conterno in NYC. Now I'm here in Aspen and it's even more exciting. This is the 27th anniversary of the festival, which is a mix of genius chef demos, wine seminars and a whole lot of parties. Every minute there’s something amazing going on; I’ve made a huge effort to pick three of my most anticipated events.

Mario Batali and Nancy Silverton preparing dishes from Osteria Mozza: Batali’s seminars are invariably some of Aspen’s best and most entertaining; this year, the amazing Silverton will help him prepare dishes from their L.A. restaurant, including spaghetti with garlic and guanciale.

Sommelier Challenge: The great Lettie Teague, F&W wine columnist, pits four of the country’s elite sommeliers (including Bobby Stuckey of Boulder’s Frasca Food and Wine and Jordan Salcito of NYC’s Gilt) against each other to see who is best at selling wines. It’s not unlike watching Britain’s Got Talent, minus the singing and dancing.

Classic Quickfire: On Sunday morning @ 10.30 (not too early, thank goodness—Saturday night is party night in Aspen), Top Chef season 4 winner Stephanie Izard will face off against Top Chef season 5 winner Hosea Rosenberg. They’ll each have a superstar assistant. I have my own ideas about who will win; let’s see if I’m right.