sautéed fluke with lemon, ramps; tomatoes; collards, garlic

I love fluke. Only incidentally, it happens to be one of but 2 kinds of ocean fish, other than mollusks, that I have caught myself. The second was Pacific Lincod. The fluke was caught off Long Island.

  • two 9-ounce fluke fillets from American Seafood Company, washed, dried, brushed with a bit of good white wine vinegar and sprinkled with sea salt, each piece halved for convenience in cooking, dredged in a coarse local stone-ground flour, sautéed in a couple tablespoons or more of good Whole Food Market house Portuguese olive oil, turning once, until barely cooked through, 4 halved Backyard Farms Maine ‘cocktail tomatoes’ from Whole Foods Market added to the pan just before the fish was removed to 2 warm plates, the tomatoes removed and also tranferred to the plates once they had softened, after which 2 or 3 tablespoons of Organic Valley ‘Cultured Pasture Butter, a couple tablespoons of Whole Foods Market organic lemon juice, and roughly an ounce of ramps (chopped bulbs and sliced leaves) from Mountain Sweet Berry Farm were added to the pan and all stirred for a minute or less before the sauce was poured over the fillets [the red bits in the picture at the top are segments of the ramp stems that retain some of their outer shell]

  • one small bunch of young collard greens from Norwich Meadows Farm, stripped of most of their stems, cut very roughly, washed several times and drained, transferred to a smaller bowl very quickly, in order to retain as much of the water clinging to them as possible, braised inside a heavy antique high-sided tin-lined copper pot in which 2 Rocambole Keith’s Farm garlic cloves had been allowed to sweat in a tablespoon or a little more of Whole Foods Market Portuguese house olive oil, adding a little of the reserved water along the way as necessary, finished with salt, pepper, and a bit more olive oil
  • slices of a Bien Cuit ‘Campagne’ traditional sourdough from Foragers Market
  • the wine was a Portuguese (Dão), Pedra Cancela Malvasia Fina/Encruzado Reserva 2014, from Garnet Wines 
  • the music was Bruckner’s Symphony No. 3,  Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting the Orchestre Métropolitain