One of the most exciting – and satisfying – things about assembling a frittata is the freedom you have to put things into it. This could encourage a penchant for cleaning out the refrigerator, but usually without sacrificing the success of the frittata itself (because of the extreme adaptability of the basic formula); that’s what happened this time.

• it was a bell pepper frittata, and the preparation went somewhat along the lines of the one shown in this post, but once you’ve cooked a few frittatas, anything like a detailed recipe seems pretty unnecessary, if not useless; for this one I used 12 ounces of small particolored sweet peppers from Norwich Meadows Farm, garlic from from S. & S.O. Produce Farms, one small leek from Tamarack Hollow Farm, one shallot from Norwich Meadows Farm, bits of 2 small hot peppers (one yellow and one green) from Eckerton Hill Farm, 8 eggs from Millport Dairy Farm, a couple tablespoons of whole milk from from Trickling Springs Creamery via Whole Foods, rosemary from Phillips Farm, marjoram and winter savory from Stokes Farm, thyme from Keith’s Farm, 3 small celery stalks and their greens from Norwich Meadows Farm, Piment d’Espelette from the French Basque (purchased in a small town north of Baie-Comeau, Quebec from the producer’s daughter), a bit of gremolata first prepared for this meal, and ‘Bull’s Blood’ micro beet from Windfall Farms
• the wine was a Spanish (Rueda) white, Bodegas & Viñedos Neo Primer Motivo Verdejo Rueda 2015
• the music was Bohuslav Martinů, ‘Concertino for Piano Trio and String Orchestra’, H. 231, and ‘Rhapsody-Concerto (Memorial to Lidice)’, H. 232

A pretty glorious meal.

I’m probably most comfortable with Italian-oriented cookery, and its modern emanations, but when I return to one of my earliest enthusiasms, German cooking (which began in the early-60s in Germany and was later encouraged by Mimi Sheraton and her 1965, ‘German Cookery’), both the ingredients and the process seem totally familiar, and the results are usually very good.

Last night we enjoyed one of the very, very good results.

While I took many liberties with some classics, the meal remained basically pretty German, including that its culture was the specific source for both the pork and the beets (Pennsylvania German), and the wine and the music (Frankish German).

 

• three small leeks from Tamarack Hollow Farm, mostly only the white portions (the better green, upper sections reserved), sliced once lengthwise, rinsed (these needed very little) and swirled around for a minute in a small amount of butter (in the past I have also used bacon fat or duck fat, alone or in various proportions) which had been heated inside a round tin-lined copper pan before adding 2 smoked loin pork chops [‘Kassler‘], from an Amish family farm in Pennsylvania which sells its produce at the Union Square Greenmarket as ‘Millport Dairy‘, a Pyrex glass cover added immediately and the chops kept above a very low flame (just enough to warm them, since as smoked meat, they were already fully-cooked), turning the chops once, and, near the end of the cooking time, the green parts of the leeks set aside earlier added and stirred about, the pork removed, plated, brushed with a horseradish jelly from Berkshire Berries, the pork then drizzled with the juices, including the the leek segments
• fourteen ounces of some quite small purple-top turnips tiny white purple-top turnips from Gorzynski Ornery Farm, scrubbed, but not peeled, cooked briefly (4 minutes, or until lightly browned in spots) over moderately high heat inside a large enameled cast iron pan in a little butter before a fourth of a cup of good chicken stock was added, along with several sprigs of thyme and a small pinch of sugar, the pan covered, and the turnips cooked until they were tender (only about 15-20 minutes in this case, and the stock had already reduced by then to a slightly-thickened sauce), the thyme removed seasoned with salt and pepper and sprinkled with chopped parsley from Norwich Meadows Farm
• a rich, spicy quince chutney, remaining from this dinner
• small side dishes of pickled red beets from Millport Dairy Farm
• the wine was a German (Franken) white, Weingut Schmitt Kinder Gutswein Silvaner Trocken 2014, from Chelsea Wine Vault\
• the music was [most of] Glück’s Alceste’, John Eliot Gardner conducting the English Baroque Soloists and the Monteverdi Choir, with Yann Beuron, Dietrich Henschel, Anne Sofie von Otter, Joanne Lunn, et al., to be continued another evening

Two different kinds of mushrooms in two 3 days is something of a record on our table. I would be using these magic fungi more often, but I’m not yet used to thinking of how they might go with other parts of the meals I put together.  When I can, and I see some beautiful mushrooms in front of me, I happy to take them home.

But his time the mushrooms came first; I came up with the rest of the dinner much later.

• twelve ounces of Rana fresh whole wheat tagliatelle, purchased from their very beautiful pasta station in Chelsea Market only an hour before, served with a sauce using blue oyster mushrooms from Blue Oyster Cultivation in the Greenmarket (see the image below), prepared pretty much according to this simple recipe, halved, but adding 2 elements to it: one chopped fresh habanada pepper just after the cream was introduced, and purple micro radish from Windfall Farms; the source of the other ingredients were red onion (instead of the yellow specified) from Norwich Meadows Farm, garlic cloves from S. & S.O. Produce Farms, parsley parsley from Norwich Meadows Farm, and pine nuts from Whole Foods (which I had first toasted gently in a dry cast iron pan)
• the wine was a Washington (Columbia) red, Katy Michaud Cabernet Sauvignon Columbia Valley 2014 from our good friends, Naked Wines
• the music was Q2 Music, streaming, specifically Gregory Spears’s ‘Requiem’