VOL. XIII
NO. 014
Bottle & Flame
Musings on food, wine, and more
EST. MMXIII
LAKE OSWEGO, OR
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Issue 014 · May 2026 · Brooklyn
Currently drinking · 2019 BourgueilOn the stove · Brown butter, capers
FIG · SAUSAGE & PEPPERS
Featured · Flame · Recipe

Sheet Pan Sausages, Peppers & Onions

The recipe said 30 minutes at 425. It lied. Nearly an hour, a bump to 450 at the end, and then the best version of this I've made — sausages, peppers, onions, Graza, salt, pepper, toasted hoagie, cheese, mustard. That's it.

An aside · No. 47
“Cook for an hour and you might learn something. Cook for ten years and you might unlearn the wrong things.
— From a 2019 dispatch

Field notes.

Briefer than an essay, longer than a tweet. Updated whenever something’s worth saying.

Drinking tonight
A 2019 Bourgueil. Cool, peppery, gone in an hour.
On the stove
Brown butter with capers and toasted breadcrumbs.
Reading
Bill Buford’s Heat, again. The Babbo chapters still hold.
Listening
A David Chang interview from 2017 that holds up fine.
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Brian Fenn
About the maker

Writing from Lake Oswego.

Bottle & Flame has been a notebook since 2013 — kitchens in London, Shanghai, and now Oregon. Brian cooks from memory as much as from recipes: what a market in Xintiandi taught him, what a Sunday roast in Islington required, what the pantry in Lake Oswego demands on a Tuesday night.