December breakfast: bacon and eggs, tomatoes and chilis

It was the first morning of December, so of course we enjoyed local tomatoes with our breakfast.

The 2 that I used in this meal, saving the rest for a dinner the next day, came from a small stash that I thought at the time would be the last of a long season, but at the Greenmarket 3 days later I picked up 2 medium heirloom tomatoes and a basket of heirloom cherry tomatoes from a Pennsylvania farmer located further to the south (roughly 60 miles further) than the New York farm where these had been grown.

  • our breakfast, a little simpler than usual, included 4 slices of thick bacon from pastured pigs and 6 fresh eggs from pastured chickens, all from the Amish family-run Millport Dairy Farm stand in the Union Square Greenmarket, the eggs seasoned with a local Long Island sea salt (from P.E. & D.D. Seafood), freshly ground black pepper, and sprinkled with torn leaves off of a live basil plant from Stokes Farm, garnished on the side with a little purple micro radish from Windfall Farms; there was a small assembly of slices of small green tomatoes that had been warmed in a little olive oil inside a small copper skillet along with a few chopped seasoning peppers (aji dulce (red) and Granada, both from Eckerton Hill Farm, served on a few leaves from a small head of radicchio variegato di Castelfranco from Campo Rosso Farm; a rich local butter (Organic Valley ‘Cultured Pasture Butter’ from Chelsea Whole Foods, and slices, untoasted, of Homadama bread (wheat, corn, water, maple syrup, salt, slaked lime) from Lost Bread Co.
  • the music was Francesco Bartolomeo Conti’s 1715 ‘Missa Sancti Pauli’, György Vashegyi conducting the Orfeo Orchestra and the Purcell Choir