Food is often about color, even when it’s not really about color.

But food photography, even casual food photography, is always about color.

Sometimes the colors change along the way, but that’s part of the story too.

This time it was the mushrooms that gave a show.

• five ounces of some very definitely pink oyster mushrooms (which change to a gold yellow when they begin sautéing, through to an orange brown or copper color once cooked) from Joe Rizzo of Blue Oyster Cultivation in the Union Square Greenmarket, sliced somewhat roughly, added to a heavy antique copper skillet in which one sliced red spring onion from Norwich Meadows Farm had first been softened in a tablespoon or so of butter, the mushrooms immediately salted, to encourage their moisture escaping, and gently sautéed for several minutes until brown, a splash of Lustau dry (fino) sherry from Philippe Wines stirred in, the mushrooms seasoned with freshly ground black pepper and kept warm while the fish, whose cooking process had just begun, was finished
• one very fresh 14 ounce flounder fillet from P.E. & D.D. Seafood Company (where I heard it also described as a winter fluke), carefully halved lengthwise, seasoned on both sides with the fisherman’s own local sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper, sautéed fairly gently in a tablespoons and a half of butter inside a large (13-inch), thick-walled antique tin-lined copper pan, flesh side first, turned after about 2 minutes and the second side cooked for about the same length of time before the fish was removed and arranged on 2 plates, the mushrooms spooned onto the edge of and next to the fillets, micro kale from Norwich Meadows Farm strewn between fish and mushrooms

• small, sweet, late season yellow ‘filet beans’ (small yellow pole beans, or Haricots Jaunes) from Norwich Meadows Farm, trimmed, left whole, blanched, drained and dried, then reheated in a little olive oil inside a heavy well seasoned cast iron pan, finished with salt, pepper, and more olive oil, arranged on the plates and garnished with some fennel fronds from small bulbs purchased from Quarton Farm a while back
• the wine was a French (Burgundy) white, Joseph Droouhin Laforêt Bourgogne Chardonnay 2018, from Philippe Wines
• the music was a brilliant album, ‘Silencio’, Gidon Kremer and his ensemble Kremerata Baltica, performing music by Philip Glass, Arvo Pärt, and Vladimir Martynov