crab cake on tomato salsa, with zhug; mustard kale, garlic

I didn’t get to the Union Square Greenmarket on Monday, so while I missed the P.E. & D.D. Seafood stall, that night I rewarded us both with a meal that included a pair of their crab cakes made inside their home by Delores Karlin, wife of fisherman Phil Karlin, that I’d defrosted earlier in the day.

  • two frozen crab cakes from P.E. & D.D. Seafood (crab, egg, flour, red & green peppers, garlic, salt, pepper, breadcrumbs, mayonnaise, milk, celery, and parsley), defrosted earlier, heated with a drizzle of olive oil inside a small perfectly seasoned ancient cast iron pan, 3 to 4 minutes to each side, served on a salsa composed of one large ripe red heirloom tomato, chopped, from Jersey Farm Produce Inc. at the Saturday 23rd Street farmers market, plus much of a small scallion, finely chopped, from Alex’s Tomato Farm in the same market, some sea salt, freshly-ground black pepper, a bit of scissored chives from Space at Ryder Farm, and a little olive oil, finished with a judicious amount of the cook’s own homemade Zhug spread on top of the cakes, the whole garnished with a sprinkling of micro chervil from Two Guys from Woodbridge [this time there was a lot of salsa, but noting to self that it would be best to put the crispy cakes next to the colder, moist salsa, and not on it]
  • the remainder of most of a very large bunch of a delicious unnamed green that I was told is a mix of kale and mustard, from Quarton Farm, washed several times and chopped very roughly, including the stems, wilted inside a large antique copper pot in a little olive oil in which several thinly sliced ‘Chesnok Red’ Red’ garlic cloves from Alewife Farm had been warmed and begun to color, the greens arranged on the plates, seasoned with salt and pepper and drizzled with a little olive oil
  • the wine for both courses was a Spanish (Catalonia/Tarragona/Monsant) white, Franck Massard Herbis Verdejo 2018, from Naked Wines
  • the music was the album, Játékok’ (Games), with works by György Kurtág alternating with Bach transcriptions, both being the creations of Kurtág himself and of his wife Márta Kurtág, in two and four handed piano accounts performed by the two of them