Month: February 2011

support small local commercial fishermen

I regularly buy fish from the Union Square Greenmarket. I always leave with fish and a smile on my face, regardless of which of the stands I’ve visited.   One of the venders I find there is PE & DD Seafood.   Today, while looking for a link to a post once again mentioning this Riverhead family operation, I found this beautiful short documentary video on the food.curated site:  “Keeping Afloat w/PE & DD Seafood:  Why Supporting Small,  Local Commercial Fishermen is Important”  This time I walked away with tears – happy tears.

Keeping Afloat: Why Supporting Small, Local Commercial Fishermen is Important from SkeeterNYC on Vimeo.

cod with green sauce, broccoli

dinner, 2/21/11

I love broccoli – even “straight” – but I wanted something slightly more imaginative to go with a beautiful fresh cod fillet I had picked up at the Greenmarket.  I tend to prefer vegetables barely cooked, and I almost always avoid complex treatments, but when I looked inside my paper folder with the “broccoli” tab, I was instantly seduced by the ingredients listed in a Kyle Phillips recipe I had printed some time back.

Halfway through the preparation however I was taken aback when I saw that the “brew” appeared, to my eyes, overcooked, and had come to resemble the limp contorno found in authentic Italian cookery.  I shouldn’t have worried, and I should have remembered how good Italian vegetable preparation can be at its best:  The Broccoletti con Pan Grattato e Acciunghe was awesome, and I will certainly be doing it again.

  • cod fillet in green sauce (described by Mark Bittman as “a Basque staple”), that is, a seasoned fillet from Riverhead-based PE & DD Seafood in the Union Square Greenmarket, cooked slowly for maybe 10 to 12 minutes in a skillet with a generous amount of oil,  turned once halfway through, a handful of chopped parsley added at the time;  accompanied by broccoli, a beautiful, blue-bud sorta-Asian variety (“broccolini,” or  “baby broccoli,” which is actually cross between broccoli and Gai Lan, also known as Chinese Broccoli) from D&J Organic Farm, also in the Greenmarket, cooked with bread crumbs & anchovies (Broccoletti con Pan Grattato e Acciunghe)
  • wine:  Spanish, Naia 2008 Rueda (Verdejo) by Jorge Ordonez, from 67 Wine