There are seafood dishes that both evoke and hail summer. Probably less familiar are those that suggest and welcome the colder months of fall, or even of winter. This past Saturday fell within one of those colder months, and this hardy dish did its seasonal thing very well.

Fortunately the vegetable chosen, also a seasonal thing, mostly, wasn’t the least bit shy either.

It was all really, really good.

• an interesting mix of 4 different alliums, born of necessity, but consumed with great pleasure, consisting of one shallot from Lucky Dog Organic Farm, joined, because there was only one of its kind in my larder, by 10 really tiny (an early harvest) Stuttgarter yellow onions from Keith’s Farm, themselves also the only ones I had (as well as the first I’d ever seen, at least identified as such), plus one small red onion from Quarton Farm, and one sweet walla walla onion from Alewife Farm, all peeled and, but the Stuttgarter, which were left whole or halved, cut into equal, roughly half-inch sizes, sautéed inside an oval tin-lined copper gratin pan in 3 tablespoons of olive oil over a medium-high flame, stirring occasionally, until they had begun to soften, joined by 8 ounces of whole shiitake mushrooms from, from Bulich Mushroom Company in the Union Square Greenmarket, adding a good pinch of sea salt and freshly-ground pepper, continuing to sauté everything, stirring occasionally, until all were nicely browned (about 7 or 8 minutes), at which time one third of a cup of good Spanish Rioja wine vinegar was added, cooked, stirring, over medium high heat for about a minute, while scraping up any browned bits stuck on the bottom, the pan removed and set aside, wiped clean inside with paper towels and returned to a flame, now turned high, and two 8-ounce haddock fillets from P.E. & D.D. Seafood, with skin on, that had already been rubbed on both sides with 2 tablespoons of olive oil and seasoned with sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper, added to the pan when it was very hot, skin side up, and seared until a good brown crust had developed, or for about 3 minutes, the fillets turned over, the reserved onions, mushrooms, and pan juices arranged around fish, everything scattered with fresh rosemary branches from Alewife Farm, the pan placed inside a 400º oven and roasted for about 12 minutes or so [the original haddock recipe appears here]

• two very different-sized heads of treviso (one small, one medium to large) from S. & S.O. Produce, washed, drained and wiped off, cut lengthwise into sections, their various sizes and numbers of leaves pulled apart and reassembled into 4 stacks which were then tied up with butchers string before they were arranged on a large Pampered Chef unglazed ceramic oven pan, covered with a good number of fresh thyme branches from Phillips Farm, seasoned generously with sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper, drizzled with 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and baked 10 minutes or so in the same 400º oven prepared for the haddock, flipped to the other side and returned to the oven for another 10 minutes,
• the wine was an Oregon (Willamette Valley) white, Erath Pinot Gris 2016, from Philippe Wines
• the music was Donizetti’s 1835 [very] dramma tragico, ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’, in a recording with Jesús Lopez-Cobos conducting the Munich Opera Orchestra and the Munich Opera Chorus