(sunlight reflected from the north on its rare stretch across an ancient table)

The Amish generally have a reputation for their traditional ways, and their reluctance to adopt modern conveniences, although this hasn’t always meant always abjuring actual modern technologies, and there are major variations in the practice of  their many communities.  Still, it’s interesting to find the Amish farm most familiar to this New Yorker, and perhaps most New Yorkers, introducing us to relatively innovative food products.

I’m no longer surprised to see John Stoltzfoos selling things like peppery cheeses and spicy sausages (all excellent, by the way), but I was recently surprised to  find him in his family’s Millport Dairy Farm stall at the Union Square Greenmarket, selling blue eggs that had been laid by the trendy Americauna chicken, which was first bred in the US in the 1970s.

I’ve been buying those eggs ever since. The color is only incidental for me: It’s the taste and those plump, deep-yellow yolks that are the attraction for both Barry and I now.

This morning afternoon they dominated a particularly beautiful breakfast table, a rather traditional American board whose ingredients were, except for the salt and pepper, and, probably, the butter, entirely of local origin.

• the makings of this meal included thick bacon from Millport Dairy Farm, Cultured Pastured Butter from Organic Valley, Japanese scallion greens from Norwich Meadows Farm (remarkable survivors, with some attention, in the crisper!), Ameraucana chicken eggs from Millport Dairy Farm, black pepper, sea salt, Maldon sea salt for finishing, crushed dried golden/orange habanada bought fresh from Norwich Meadows Farm, Backyard Farms Maine ‘cocktail tomatoes’ (from Maine, near Skowhegan, and they are so pretty local, pretty green) via Whole Foods Market, winter savory (now half-dried from branches that were originally fresh) from Stokes Farm, fresh lovage from two Guys from Woodbridge, toasts of a day-old whole wheat baguette from Runner & Stone Bakery, and fresh slices of a Sullivan Street Stirato
• the music was an extraordinary performance of Beethoven’s 1823 ‘Missa Solemnis’ John Eliot Gardiner conducting l’Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, the Monteverdi Choir, and the solists Alastair Miles, Charlotte Margiono, Catherine Robbin, and William Kendall

I’m nursing myself back to health by continuing to cook every day, and last night I started to get back to serious start-from-scratch cooking with a really simple meal. Actually, the desire for simplicity was driven at least as much by a consideration of the short time I had for preparation, since we wouldn’t return from the theater (the Civilians’ ‘The Undertaking’) until after 9:30.

We were sitting down to this meal less than an hour later, even though I had taken my time putting it together, and we enjoyed a drink first, while talking about Steve Cossen‘s terrific play.

• one 11-ounce yellowfin tuna steak off of Scott Rucky’s fishing vessel, ‘Dakota’, from American Seafood Company, cut into 2 pieces, rubbed, tops and bottoms, with a mixture of a dry Sicilian fennel seed from Buon Italia that had been crushed in a mortar and pestle along with a little dried peperoncino Calabresi secchi from Buon Italia, then sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper, pan-grilled above a brisk flame (for barely a minute on each side), finished on the plates with a good squeeze of the juice of an organic lemon from Whole Foods Market and some olive oil, served with micro kohlrabi from Two Guys from Woodbridge

There were green vegetables at the Union Square Greenmarket on Saturday – and this was near the end of January! I had already picked up both Savoy and red cabbage earlier in the week, but now I took home some Brussels sprouts, on the stalk, and a large bunch of kale.  I could probably make it through an entire week with these stocks, and then I could start dreaming of the earliest wild spring green stuff.

Because it would be slightly less time-consuming than roasting the sprouts, and probably a better match with the tuna, I decided it was to be the kale that would go into this meal.

• winter kale from Hoeffner Farms, washed, drained, wilted inside a large enameled cast iron pot in a tablespoon or so of olive oil in which 2 bruised and halved cloves of Rocambole garlic from Keith’s Farm had first been allowed to sweat and begin to color, the greens seasoned with sea salt, freshly-ground black pepper, and arranged on the plates and a little more olive oil drizzled on top
• pieces of a whole wheat baguette from Runner & Stone Bakery
• the wine was a California (North Coast, Lodi and Clarksburg) rosé, Evangelos Bagias California Rose 2016, from Naked Wines
• the music was Handel’s gorgeous 1709 (Venice) opera, ‘Agrippina’, John Eliot Gardiner conducting the English Baroque Soloists, with Donna Brown, Anne Sofie von Otter, Julian Clarkson, Michael Chance, Derek Lee Ragin, Della Jones, Alastair Miles, George Mosley, and Jonathan Peter Kenny

On Friday I was down with a bad cold, or something like that, so I wasn’t up to a trip to the Greenmarket, and I also didn’t trust my ability to put together a meal from scratch, so I reached into the freezer where I can usually find a good filled pasta that would do very well in such a pinch, then looked around for some sympathetic additions I might assemble with it.

It was a pretty ordinary meal, and similar to many I’ve already included on this blog; I wouldn’t normally have bothered to enter it here, except that I saw it looks pretty interesting in the picture.

• between one and two tablespoons of olive oil heated slowly inside a large high-sided tin-lined heavy copper pan with a crushed piece of orange/gold habanada pepper, joined by 8 or so pitted Gaeta olives olives from Buon Italia and a handful of pine nuts, also from Buon Italia, slowly heated and browned earlier inside a small well-seasoned cast iron pan, sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper then added just before a 10-ounce package of frozen Rana portobello-mushroom-and-ricotta-filled ravioli rounds from Eataly that had just been boiled inside a large pot of well-salted water for 2 minutes and drained was slipped into the copper pan and mixed well with the sauce, everything now stirred together over a low flame, along with some of the reserved pasta water (in order to emulsify the liquid), the mix arranged inside 2 shallow bowls, some olive oil drizzled on top and around the edges, finished with freshly-grated cheese (Parmigiano Reggiano Hombre from Whole Foods Market) and a scattering of micro kohlrabi from Two Guys from Woodbridge

There was a cheese course.

• a maturing Ardith Mae Chevre
• a couple pinches of crushed dried wild Italian myrtle [Mirto/Myrtus], berries and leaves, from Buon Italia (in Italy, sometimes used as an alternative to juniper berries, in pork dishes especially – including wild boar, or, in Sardinia and Corsica, in making a liqueur)
• a bit of micro red amaranth from Two Guys from Woodbridge
• thin toasts of a She Wolf Bakery polenta boule

• the wine throughout the meal was an Italian (Tuscany) red, Lanciola Chianti Colli Fiorentini 2013, from Philippe Liquors
• the music was from the album, ‘Haydn: Complete Symphonies‘, including No. 104 (1762), and several that are un-numbered, all performed by Adám Fischer and the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra

We’ve been enjoying sugo all’amatriciana for decades, but I’m only now beginning to understand how many subtle variations there are to this classic Italian, or Lazio (Roman?) dish, in spite of the fact that its components can almost be counted with the fingers of one hand.

I went with Kyle Phillip’s recipe this time. He writes, “Roman versions tend to use bucatini..”, and that’s what I used, 10 ounces of Setaro Bucatini from Buon Italia, mostly because, of the pastas I had, it was the closest to spaghetti, which is probably the more usual choice. I used a ‘pancetta pepato‘, also from Buon Italia, substituting for the customary guanciale (cured pork cheek); a Sini Fulvi pecorino cheese from Romano, and not Amatrice, from Chelsea Whole Foods Market; true Italian San Marzano tomatoes, like the cheese, La Fede D.O.P. dell’Agro Sarnese, also from Chelsea Whole Foods Market*; whole black pepper, ground fresh; sea salt from the French Mediterranean coast,; and 2 small dried chili peppers, peperoncino Calabresi secchi, from Calabria via Buon Italia. I also used local garlic, Sicilian Rocambole, from Keith’s Farm, and a little local sweet yellow onion, from Norwich Meadows Farm, both of which which would apparently be condemned in Amatrice itself, and I didn’t use any white wine this time, an omission which it seems would also offend some purists.

*Ah, those tomatoes.

I’m going to try to remember to go with the classic formula next time (wine, but no garlic, and no onion), and I’ll compare the two, if I can remember well enough what this one tasted like.

It’s interesting that three of Rome’s classic pasta dishes, Gricia, Amatriciana, and Carbonara, are so closely related, despite being very distinctive in taste. I’ve prepared two of them recently; I expect to move to a Carbonara, the most modern of the 3, in the near future, to complete the trilogy.

• the wine was an Italian (Campania) red, Mastro Aglianico Campania IGT 2106, from Philippe Liquors
• the music was Monteverdi’s 1607 opera, ‘L’Orfeo’, John Eliot Gardiner conducting the English Baroque Soloists, the Monteverdi Choir, and His Majestys Sagbutts and Cornetts, with the soloists Lynne Dawson, Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Anne Sofie von Otter, and John Tomlinson

It was definitely winter (the parsnips we enjoyed were purchased from a stand in the greenmarket during a snowstorm), so last night’s meal wasn’t going to look like something from last July.

(the Berkshire Berries table on the afternoon when I bought the parsnips)

But many of the same fish we enjoy in the summer are still around, or around again, even when, because of the extreme cold, our local fishers sometimes can’t get out of the harbor to pull them in. Yesterday I did what I could to bring summer and winter together a bit, with the help of a bridge between the seasons assembled from fresh mushrooms and micro greens.

• two 8-ounce fluke fillet from American Seafood Company, seasoned on both sides with sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper, sautéed skin-side down for 3 minutes over a fairly brisk flame with butter and a little olive oil inside a large, thick oval tin-lined copper pan, then turned and the other side cooked for about the same length of time, removed to plates resting on top of the 1934 Magic Chef oven when done (also covered at least a little to keep warm until the sauce was completed), a tablespoon or 2 of butter added to the pan, and 4 ounces or so of oyster mushrooms from Bulich Mushroom Farm, cut into medium-size pieces, added and sautéed, stirring, until lightly cooked, seasoned with salt and pepper, stirred with a couple tablespoons of a mix of chopped parsley from Westside Market on 7th Avenue and lovage from Two Guys from Woodbridge, and a tablespoon or more of the juice of an organic lemon from Whole Foods Market, arranged on the plates along the length of the warm fillets and garnished on the side with micro red amaranth, also from Two Guys from Woodbridge

• parsnips from Norwich Meadows Farm, scrubbed thoroughly, sliced, mostly into 1/4-to-1/2″ discs, tossed with little more than a tablespoon of olive oil, sea salt, freshly-ground black pepper, a small piece of crushed dried gold/orange habanada pepper, a quarter teaspoon or so of Spanish paprika picante,roasted inside a 425º oven for about 25 minutes, arranged on the plates on the other side of the line of micro amaranth
• the wine was a California (Lodi) white, Scott Peterson S.P. Drummer Napa Chardonnay 2016, from Naked Wines
• the music was Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s 1898 opera, ‘The Tsar’s Bride’, with Gergiev and the Kirov Opera, with Liubov Sokolov, Ludmila Kassianenko, Victor Vikhrov, Olga Markova-Mikhailenko, Olga Borodina, Sergei Alexashkin, Irina Loskutova, Nikolai Gassiev, Marina Shaguch, Genadij Bezzubenkov, Evgeny Akimov, Yuri Shkliar, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky

It’s possible my memory is blurred, but until I can be persuaded otherwise, I’m going to say this was the best steak I’d ever had.

The cut itself (called ‘culotte’ here, ‘coulotte’ in France, ‘picanha’ in Brazil) has become my favorite, certainly for its flavor but also for the kind of chewiness I enjoy in good beef; ‘melt in your mouth’ is not what I look for.

Adding to its attractions is the fact it seems to come with a consistency in size, and, because I’ve been instructed in a routine which brings it to our preferred degree of doneness (more medium than medium-rare, with this particularly lean cut), there’s little anxiety about the cooking process, since it seems to come our perfectly each time, letting me pay more attention preparing the side dishes, even shortly before serving.

• * one 20-ounce culotte steak from Gabe, of Sun Fed Beef (Maple Avenue Farms) in the Union Square Greenmarket, cut crosswise into 2 pieces, brought to room temperature, seasoned on all sides with good sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper, seared briefly on the top, the fat side (almost half of the fat will be rendered in the cooking, the rest will make it taste wonderful), then cooked for about 4 minutes on each side, before the bottom side was seared briefly, removed from the pan, and placed on warm plates, drizzled with juice from an organic Whole Foods Market lemon and some olive oil, sprinkled with chopped winter savory from Stokes Farm and allowed to rest for about 4 minutes, garnished with Micro red amaranth from Two Guys from Woodbridge

• * roughly 10 ounces of celery root from Norwich Meadows Farm, combined with 2 small ‘Peter Wilcox’ white-fleshed purple potatoes from Windfall Farms to make up about 3 quarters of a pound in total, since I had used a bit of the celeriac in an earlier meal, scrubbed, peeled, and cut into the size and shape of potato frites, tossed in a bowl with olive oil, a half teaspoon of Spanish paprika picante, a small crushed section of an orange/gold habanada pepper, sea salt, and freshly-ground pepper, spread out onto a medium-size Pampered Chef unglazed ceramic pan, roasted at 400º until brown, crispy on the edges, and cooked through
• one very small head of Savoy cabbage from Tamarack Hollow Farm, washed, quartered, cored, sliced into one-half-inch ribbons, sautéed in a scant tablespoon of olive oil inside a medium heavy, tin-lined copper pot until wilted but still crunchy, stirring occasionally,  seasoned with sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper, a little more than a teaspoon of toasted cumin seed, added to the cabbage and mixed in, finished with half a teaspoon of Columela Rioja 30 Year Reserva sherry vinegar, stirred and cooked another couple minutes
• the wine was a Spanish (Duero) red, Bodegas Gormaz Joven, Ribera del Duero 2013, from Philippe Liquors
• the music was Bohislav Martinü’s Symphony No. 4, Cornelius Meister conducting the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra

Crab cakes from the Union Square Greenmarket: They’re an invitation to improvise, incredibly simple to ‘cook’, and always delicious.

The fishers were unable to bring anything to the market on Monday, because the intense cold had meant they wouldn’t be able to go out on the ocean, so I reached into the freezer for my small reserve stock of crab cakes.

• two crab cakes from PE & DD Seafood (crab, egg, flour, red & green peppers, garlic, salt, pepper, breadcrumbs, mayonnaise, milk, celery, and parsley), defrosted earlier in the evening, heated with a drizzle of olive oil inside a heavy oval enameled cast iron pan, 3 to 4 minutes to each side, served on a salsa composed of 8 or so chopped Backyard Farms Maine ‘cocktail tomatoes’ from Whole Foods, sea salt, freshly-ground black pepper, a bit of a powdered proprietary seasoning blend, L’eKama, a small bit of dried peperoncino Calabresi secchi from Buon Italia, chopped winter savory from Stokes Farm, and a number of really tiny chopped scallions from Willow Wisp Farm, garnished with a sprinkling of micro amaranth from Two Guys from Woodbridge, the salsa itself arranged on the plates partially on top of some leaves torn from a live hydroponic plant from Two Guys from Woodbridge

• small ‘Peter Wilcox’ purple-skinned white flesh potatoes, boiled inside a large vintage Corning Pyrex Flameware blue-glass pot, along with a generous amount of salt until barely cooked through, drained, halved, dried inside the still warm pot, tossed with a tablespoon or so of olive oil, and one chopped Japanese scallion (a bit like a leek) from Norwich Meadows Farm, sprinkled with a little sea salt, freshly-ground black pepper, and chopped lovage, again from Two Guys from Woodbridge, arranged on the plates and garnished with homemade breadcrumbs which had first been browned in a little olive oil with a pinch of sea salt

There was a cheese course, and this time it included both fruit and toasts, plus one extra tidbit.

• Consider Bardwell ‘Rupert’ goat cheese and a soft goat, a chevre, from Ardith Mae that our neglect since purchasing it farther back than I can recall, had inadvertently – and pretty surprisingly – allowed to mature beautifully
• one Seckel pear from Caradonna Farms in the Union Square Greenmarket
• toasts from a She Wolf Bakery polenta boule
• beet chips’ (thin slices of oven-dried beet) from Lani’s Farm

• the wine throughout the meal was a California (Clarksburg) white, Richard Bruno Clarksburg Chenin Blanc 2016, from Naked Wines
• the music was an album of Andris Nelsons conducting the Boston Symphony in Wagner’s overture to ‘Tannhäuser’, and Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2 in D, opus 43

“la cucina de na vorta”

We’ve been enjoying this simple pasta from Lazio for decades, and I highly recommend it to anyone who appreciates a delicious, genuinely honest dish, dalla cucina dei poveri, with a surprising sophistication but a simplicity that allows it to be fully assembled and on the table in only about 15 minutes.

There are only 6 ingredients (4 if you discount salt and pepper), and the only one most people may not have lying around at home might be pancetta or, better, guanciale, to which I’d add for those who aren’t vegetarian, ‘and why isn’t it there’?  It’s so easy to keep a chunk of guanciale in the freezer, and if it’s hard to find, pancetta is almost as good, but it must be in chunk form. On Sunday I had some ‘pancetta pepato‘ for the first time ever; I don’t know where it fits on the beautiful scale that stretches between regular pancetta and guanciale, but it was pretty awesome,

My relationship with this dish started in 1989, with a newspaper article by Fred Plotkin published in the New York Times, and Barry and I have shared it many times since, both at home in New York, and in Rome, dining outside the piccola trattoria, ‘da Lucia‘, the Trastevere restaurant featured in Fred’s article, where Lucia Antonangeli began serving “la cucina de na vorta” (the cooking of once upon a time) at her family’s restaurant in 1938.

It’s one of the very few recipes I use to which I never add or subtract a thing; it’s perfect, and it’s a classic in the classic sense.  The only variation that will ever be found in our home is the type of pasta used: Will it be long or short, and which long, which short? From what I have learned the choice seems to be debatable anyway.

• last night I cooked 10 ounces of Setaro spaghetti from Buon Italia in a large stainless steel pot of water, to which almost 2 tablespoons of sea salt had first been added, until the pasta was barely al dente, reserving some of the liquid, drained it and and tossed it into a large enameled cast iron pot in which (while the spaghetti was boiling) 5 ounces of ‘pancetta pepato’ from Buon Italia, cut in 1/2 to 1 inch square pieces, had been heated and stirred with 2 tablespoons of Whole Foods Market Portuguese house olive oil for only about a minute, then, once guanciale and pasta had been mixed together, a bit of pasta water added to the pot and  everything stirred for a minute to emulsify the sauce; several tablespoons [yes!] of very good freshly-ground Whole Foods house black pepper added and stirred into the mix, which was then removed from the heat and about 3 or 4 tablespoons of roughly-shredded pecorino Romano Sini Fulvi, also from Buon Italia, tossed into the pot and stirred, the pasta left standing for 30 seconds or so before it was served in shallow bowls, with more cheese and black pepper on the side
• the wine was a California (Lodi) white, F. Stephen Millier Angels Reserve White Blend Lodi 2016 (“..insane amounts of peach and ripe apricot flavors inside thanks [to] Stephen’s Pinot Grigio, Moscato, Chard, Viognier and Symphony grapes..”), from Naked Wines
• the music was Mendelssohn’s Symphony No 2 ‘Lobgesang’, Sir John Eliot Gardiner conducting the London Symphony Orchestra

(it really does look like eggs in purgatory)

I got so excited about this egg dish early this afternoon, that I forgot to photograph it once it had been arranged in shallow bowls. Fortunately  I had sneaked a shot of my ‘eggs in purgatory’ while they were still inside the heavy antique French copper pot.

As we sat down to ours, we were thinking of the increasingly hallowed Berlin tradition of Sunday brunch, even if at that moment most Berliners were thinking about their supper.

The recipe is from Italy (‘eggs in purgatory’ in English), via Melissa Clark, and I almost ran through it without any alterations. I did add some dried habanada pepper, a bit of adobo I had in the refrigerator, and also chopped winter savory instead of basil or parsley, as a garnish.

• I’ve just linked above to my source recipe, so I don’t have to repeat it here, but I’ll list the sources for the ingredients I used today: Whole Foods Market’s excellent (and excellent value) house brand olive oil from Portugal, garlic from Norwich Meadows Farm, salted Sicilian anchovies from Buon Italia in Chelsea Market, dried peperoncino from Calabria, Mutti tomatoes, fresh rosemary sprigs from Stokes Farm, Parmigiano Reggiano Hombre from Whole Foods Market, rich Organic Valley ‘Cultured Pasture Butter’ from Whole Foods again, blue-green Ameraucana chicken eggs from Millport Dairy Farm, winer savory from Stokes Farm, and, for the garlic toast, thick slices of a polenta boule from She Wold Bakery
• the music was the album, ‘Santiago a cappella‘, with music by Lobo, Guerrero, Victoria, John IV of Portugal, Cardoso, Rogier, and from the Llibre Vermell de Montserrat, John Eliot Gardiner conducting the Monteverdi Choir

The mutton was delicious, but cook should have used a recipe more suited to its slightly idiosyncratic properties. The ribs were finished exactly as as I hoped they would be, that is, medium-rare, but they were very chewy. I don’t believe that had to follow from using either this of meat variety or this cut: I think a more enclosed or moist cooking process would have worked better than what I have to say was basically a simple dry roasting.

I had only cooked ribs, of any kind, once before, and that was more than 6 years ago. Then they had been goat, almost the same size as these, and they were both delicious and tender. I cooked them on top of the stove, on a grill pan, but I had covered the ribs with aluminum foil and regularly basted them, at which time the foil had to be briefly pulled aside.

Last night I seared the ribs and them placed them, uncovered, in an oven for about 10-12 minutes, but I wouldn’t recommend using this process, and I wouldn’t repeat it myself, at least not without some amendment. I’m including it here mostly as a kitchen document, and as a record of the market sources I used.

(note: there were 4 double chops; only one, an outside piece, is seen in the top image)

• one 22-ounce, 9-rib section of spare rib of young mutton from Lowland Farm in the Union Square Greenmarket, seasoned with sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper, seared on both sides in a little olive oil inside a large, heavy, tin-lined oval copper skillet for about 4 minutes, the fatty side then brushed with dijon mustard before the fatty side was covered and patted down with a mixture of almost a cup of crumbs from a day-old polenta boule from She Wolf Bakery, a generous amount of finely-chopped fresh thyme and winter savory leaves from Stokes Farm, a little peppermint from Phillips Farm, parsley from S. & S.O. Produce, salt, and pepper, placed, the fatty and breaded side up, inside a rectangular glazed ceramic baking pan just large enough to hold the rack, removed when a thermometer read 120º and allowed to sit for almost 10 minutes, covered in foil, during which time the temperature had gone up to over 125º, indicating medium-rare, cut into 4 double chops, only one at a time arranged on each of 2 plates

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• ‘dragon carrots’ (red, or deep purple outside, more orange inside, looking a bit like sliced pickled eggs, once cut open) from Tamarack Hollow Farm, scrubbed, dried, tossed inside a bowl with a little olive oil, sea salt, freshly-ground black pepper, a teaspoon of ground Italian fennel seed, a bit of a crushed section of orange/gold dried habanada pepper, arranged, not touching, on a medium ceramic Pampered Chef oven pan, roasted at 400º for half an hour, or until tender, arranged on the plates and garnished with micro kohlrabi from Two Guys from Woodbridge

• cavolo nero, aka black kale, lacinato, or Tuscan kale, from Tamarack Hollow Farm, sautéed until wilted inside a large enameled cast iron pot with olive oil in which 2 halved garlic cloves from Healthway Farms & CSA had first been heated until beginning to color, seasoned with sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper and drizzled with a little olive oil
• the wine was an excellent California (Lodi) red, Karen Birmingham Reserve Zinfandel Lodi 2015, from Naked Wines
• the music was Lully’s 1686 tragédie en musique, ‘Acis Et Galatée’, Marc Minkowski conducting Les Musiciens du Louvre