COOKING WITH GRAPES

GRILLED BRAISED, BAKED STEWED OR FROZEN THEY'RE SO MUCH MORE THAN JUST A SNACK.

- LUCY SIMON

IN AUTUMN, one of my favorite places to be is at the farmers market in front of a table piled high with grapes. But while I love them, I often find myself thinking: I want to buy these, but what do I do with them?

One option is to worship them. Winemaker Eduard Tscheppe of Gut Oggau in Austria once told me, "There's something divine about the fruit of the vine." Fair enough. Winemakers like to wax poetic about anything related to wine: soil, rocks, photosynthesis, you name it. But Tscheppe was enraptured by the nature of Vitis vinifera vines. "A vine's roots can go 30 feet deep into the ground, and the plant's tendrils reach up toward the sun." I agree with him; there is just something life-affirming about grapes.

I admit I've always been fascinated by them. My childhood dining room had two still-life paintings where grapes were front and center; I puzzled over their shiny, speckled orbs. As a teen, I shunned them after a magazine called grapes "the devil's fruit" due to their high sugar content. In college, I about-faced and brought chilled grapes to parties; they're a great snack (and also a stellar chaser for a shot). I still pile grapes on plates when hosting, building still lifes of my own. But, until recently, I never cooked with them.

True, I often leaned on grape-based pantry goods, from balsamic to raisins to wine. But what to do with whole grapes? As it turns out, a lot: This time of year, grapes are frequent guests on restaurant menus, stewed to accompany pork or duck, grilled and paired with creamy desserts, or tossed into salads.

"Grapes offer such versatility in the kitchen," says chef Nick Dugan of Sorelle in Charleston. Dugan layers on flavor with grapes and grape-based ingredients: In his Pollo al Lambrusco (recipe p. 81), chicken is glazed with red wine and red wine vinegar and served over grapes and onions cooked down with balsamic and Lambrusco.