March 2006

Features

• Prewashed, Prepeeled, Prechopped: Prefab Food

  Serious cooks are taking a serious look at the new convenience ingredients sold at supermarkets—everything from presliced wild mushroom mixes to logs of slice-and-bake polenta. F&W's Grace Parisi transforms the best prefab foods into nine delicious recipes.

• Kitchen Storage: A Sharp Idea

• Living with Château Chic

  Francophiles to the core, a design-minded couple built their own New York château after years of traveling to 17th- and 18th-century estates in France. Here, a look at their style and the buys that can help anyone get that château look.

• Chefs' Favorite Toy Store: Le Sanctuaire

  Le Sanctuaire in Santa Monica, California, is pure joy for chefs, who come both to shop and to swap ideas with visionary young owner Jing Tio—an ingredient explorer, design fanatic and gifted cook.

• Designer Miles Redd

  Miles Redd, one of the greatest young designers working today, is the creative director for Oscar de la Renta Home. Redd entertains with old-world graciousness, yet also adds a modern sense of whimsy and surprise.

• Extreme Entertaining

  Scaffolding. Plastic Tarps. Space Heaters. When two avant-garde artists prepare an amazing meal at the construction site that will one day become Boston's Institute for Contemporary Art, they make every other kind of dinner party look easy.

• An Obsessive's Guide to Coffee

  F&W editors spent 410 man-hours tasting 157 coffees and testing 67 coffeemakers (not to mention 10 grinders) to find the best of the best. Here you'll find the ones that appeared in the magazine as well as bonus web-exclusives.

• Tools: Collapsible Strainers