The meal included elements of at least three different food traditions, but it wasn’t dominated by any one of them, so naturally we decided to serve a South African wine.

• four links of Schaller & Weber‘s wonderful Bauernwurst, a coarse, smokey, very traditional German country style sausage, placed next to each other inside a medium Pyrex blue Flameware pot which was then filled with cold water, just enough to cover, heated over a medium-high flame until the water had reached a gentle simmer (by which time they were fully cooked), removed, drained, dried on a paper towel, and placed above a high flame inside a seasoned cast iron pan, after its surface had been brushed with a thin layer of olive oil, seared, turning frequently, until colored on all sides, arranged on the plates with dabs of a rich shallot, garlic, paprika and turmeric mustard from Hudson Valley Charcuterie, and a second mustard, Löwensenf Hönig-Dill
• one heirloom tomato from Race Farm, halved horizontally, seasoned with local sea salt from P.E. & D.D. Seafood and freshly ground black pepper, softened on both sides in a little olive oil inside a small copper skillet, arranged on the plates on a bed of olive oil-drizzled baby arugula from Campo Rosso Farm, the  tomatoes sprinkled with a bit of chopped chive garlic seed from Space on Ryder Farm, themselves drizzled with a touch more oil

• one small (5-inch/27 ounce) ‘Blue Ballet’ squash (a variety of Hubbard squash) from Alewife Farm, scrubbed, halved, the seeds and pith removed, cut into just under one-inch wedges and mixed by hand inside a large bowl with a relatively small amount of olive oil, sea salt, black pepper, and pieces of golden dried habanada pepper, arranged on a large, unglazed, well-seasoned ceramic pan (Pampered Chef) and roasted in a 425º oven 25 minutes, removed from the oven and transferred to a large heavy copper pot in which 3 crushed cloves of ‘Chesnok Red’ garlic from Alewife Farm had been gently heated in a bit of olive oil, then arranged on the plates where they were tossed with a generous amount of micro chervil from Two Guys from Ridgefield
• the wine was a South African (Western Cape Province/Robertson Valley) red, Stephen de Wet’s Arabella Estate wine, Arabella Cabernet Sauvignon 2018 from Naked Wines
• the music was the album of music by a contemporary of Haydn, ‘Franz Ignaz Beck: Symphonies Op 4 No 1-3’, performed by Michael Schneider conducting the ensemble, La Stagione