Friday night dinner.

Barry found the recipe. I do the cooking, but he’s very, very good at ordering. I don’t mean ordering me, but ordering food in restaurants or at take out, where I, on the other hand, usually freeze up. It turns out he’s also good at spotting recipes. This was a really good one.

I halved the recipe on the delish site, and I made a few changes, substituting mint for the dill I didn’t have; red onion for “onion”, because I love red onion; vesuvio pasta for spaghetti (same); smoked steelhead trout for salmon, because we’ve recently come to love our local steelhead, also because it’s what I had on hand that day; and finally, since I can’t usually leave good enough alone, and to enhance the visuals, I added a garnish, chervil here, one of my favorites.

• a tablespoon or so of olive oil heated inside a large antique copper pot over medium heat,
  one medium/large chopped shallot cooked until softened, one clove of chopped garlic added and heated until fragrant, 2 tablespoons of white wine [poured in and stirred until it had almost completely, 3 ounces of heavy cream and 3 tablespoons of lemon juice added and stirred until thickened, the sauce seasoned with sea salt and freshly ground  black pepper before 4 ounces of smoked local steelhead trout (farmed by Hudson Valley Fisheries, in Hudson, NY), a few tablespoons of rinsed large Sicilian salted capers and a generous amount of a mint hybrid (spearmint and Peppermint) mixed in and heated briefly, or just only until the salmon had warmed through, then 8 ounces of a Gragnano Campania pasta (Afeltra Vesuvio) cooked al dente added to the pot, along with almost a cup of the pasta cooking water, and tossed together with the sauce, adding more water if desired, before the dish was  arranged inside shallow bowls, scattered with a little more mint, and garnished with chervil from Eckerton Hill Farm

There was a first course.

• a few ounces of ‘Bulgarian feta” from Moxie Ridge Farm & Creamery sprinkled with a bit of crushed dried aji dulce pepper from Ekerton Hill Farm and some torn basil taken from a live plant purchased from Stokes Farm, drizzled with a bit of Palagio Tuscan olive oil
• slices of Runner & Stone ‘Bolzano’ whole wheat and rye sourdough miche

 

• the wine throughout the meal was an Italian (Sicily) white, Stefano di Blasi IGT Sicilia Zibibbo Catarratto 2019, from Naked Wines 
• the music (through some of the meal) was Paul Dessau’s 1978 opera, ‘Leonce und Lena’ (after Georg Büchner’s 1836 play of the same name), in a 1980 performance with Otmar Suitner conducting the Berlin Staatskapelle Orchestra and Berlin State Opera Chorus, with Peter Menzel, Reiner Süss, Carola Nossek, Edda Schaller, and others [noting here that the state at the time was the DDR, or Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic)

I literally tripped over this Epicurious recipe recently while I was looking for something not even food related. I literally stopped in my tracks, because the picture accompanying it was very appetizing.

Tuesday evening I happened to have some excellent mushrooms in the apartment – and some heavy cream, which is somewhat more untypical. Both were critical for proceeding with the recipe, which I halved for the two of us.

The dish was even more satisfying than I’d expected. Also, as with most well-conceived pasta dishes, with good ingredients, it only got better the longer it sat on the table (or inside the pot, available for seconds). We tend to talk a lot during meals, and we eat very slowly, so we have a definite advantage there.

 

• half of an 8-ounce bag of superb small-ish Piopini mushrooms from Gail’s Farm in the Union Square Greenmarket, first separated from each other, tossed into a large antique tin-lined copper pot with one tablespoon of olive oil already heated over a medium-high flame, the fungi immediately sprinkled with sea salt, sautéed in a single layer, undisturbed, until their edges were brown and starting to crisp, or for about 2 minutes, then tossed and cooked further, stirring or tossing occasionally, until all sides were brown and crisp, or about 4 minutes more, then, using a slotted wooden spoon, transferred to a bowl, the other 4 ounces of mushrooms sautéed in the same manner, the process repeated with another tablespoon of oil, afterwards the heat reduced to medium-low and, with all of the mushrooms returned to the pot, one finely chopped medium shallot and one small astonishingly delicious chopped Grenada seasoning pepper added and cooked, stirring often, until the shallots were translucent and softened, or for little over a minute, then 8 ounces of really good artisanal Neapolitan spaghetti, boiled until not quite al dente and then drained, were added to the pot with a quarter cup of heavy cream and 1 cup of pasta cooking liquid, the heat increased to medium-high and the mixture cooked, tossing constantly, until the liquids had thickened, at which time the pot was removed from the heat and some lemon zest and juice (each the product of less than half of one lemon), chopped parsley, several tablespoons of butter, about a third of a cup of grated Parmesan cheese, and lots of freshly ground black pepper were tossed in and combined with the mix, more salt added if needed, the finished pasta divided between bowls and topped with more Parmesan cheese
• the wine was a wonderful Puglian red, Dominic Hentall Sangiovese Negroamaro IGT Puglia 2019, from Naked Wines
• the music was Ernst Krenek’s 1923 Schauspiel, ‘Orpheus und Eurydike’, with a libretto by Oskar Kokoschka, a 1990 performance by the RSO Wien and the ORF-Chor, conducted by Pinchas Steinberg

The pasta was a local rye grain trumpets, (‘Campanelle (little bells) in Italian) made by Sfoglini, and were two kinds of radishes, plus the greens of one kind, also spring garlic, dried smoked serrano pepper, olive oil, lemon juice, chopped baby fennel fronds, and some breadcrumbs (taken from a very sturdy loaf of bread) toasted along with a little lemon zest.

• the wine was a 2018 Villa Antinori Bianco IGT Toscana
• the music was Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8 performed by the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, directed by Yannick Nézet-Séguin

This ancient, iconic, but very simple Lazio dish, ‘pasta alla gricia‘, has been one of our favorite pastas, for many reasons, for decades. Thursday night we enjoyed one of the best ever, thanks to some guanciale I had been keeping in the freezer, an excellent Neapolitan rigatoni, which is a wine from outside that great city, and a German opera about an 8th century Asturian king (it’s okay, it’s a Schubert opera).

“Comfort food”, as Barry calls it.

• It was everything we needed for a complete dinner, and a very good one: a few ounces of very juicy cured pork cheek, 9 ounces of an artisanal dried pasta, lots of fresh New York water, a bit of Portuguese olive oil, tons of good freshly-ground black pepper, and a grating of a good cheese, also from Lazio
• the wine was an Italian (Campania) white, Feudi di San Gregorio Falanghina 2017, from Garnet Wines
• the music was Schubert’s 1823 grand Romantic opera, ‘Alfonso und Estrella’, Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting the Berlin Philharmonic

We weren’t interested in a big deal meal, so I thought I’d put together a pasta.

Barry said he would like one with which we could enjoy a red wine, so I gathered some ingredients that would please that choice. It was far more interesting, and delicious, than we had expected, and a second helping was even better, which is always the case with a good pasta.

• a little chopped garlic and chopped shallot heated until fragrant inside a large antique tin-lined copper pot, some small chopped sections of very small celery stems added and also heated briefly before the introduction of a few small pieces of dried habanada, a handful of pitted black oil-cured olives and a small amount of chopped celery leaves, then 9 ounces of Setaro Torre Annunziata Napoli Penne Rigatoni from Buon Italia in the Chelsea Market, cooked al dente, mixed in, and almost a cup of the reserved cooking water added and stirred until the liquid had emulsified, the sauced pasta placed in shallow bowls, sprinkled with lovage, finished with a sprinkling of pine nuts (accidentally toasted beyond the stage I had  intended, but the carbonization seemed perfect for this dish), garnished with c from Two Guys from Woodbridge, with a bit of olive oil drizzled around the edges
• the wine was an Italian (Pedmont/Alba) red, Barbera d’Alba, Produttori di Govone 2016, from Astor Wines
• the music was Mendelssohn’s, his 1837 Piano Concerto No. 2  and the 1824 Symphony No. 1, Kristian Bezuidenhout on fortepiano, and the Freiburger Barockorchester, Pablo Heras-Cas directing