mushroom, cheese, garlic sausage; roasted roots; shishito

A very sturdy winter dinner, with a few juicy sweet peppers to point out just how sturdy and wintry it was.

  • four 4-ounce artisanal porcini, Parmesan cheese, and black garlic fresh sausages (pork, white wine, salt, Parmesan cheese, black garlic, porcini, and shiitake mushrooms, black pepper, natural casings) from Hudson Vally Charcuterie  at Raven & Boar farm, seared in a little olive oil inside an oval enameled cast iron oval pan, turning frequently, until colored on all sides, arranged on the 2 plates, garnished with micro red Russian kale from Windfall Farms and accompanied by 4 mustards, including a rich shallot, garlic, paprika and turmeric mustard, also from Hudson Valley Charcuterie
  • [three different kinds of potatoes that I already had on hand, but none of them would have been sufficient by itself to serve as a side, all unpeeled, scrubbed and cut into approximately 3/4″ pieces (one large Kennebec potato from Mountain Sweet Berry Farm, which turned out to be a natural for this roasting treatment; one large Japanese sweet potato from Race Farm; and 2 medium-size ‘Magic Marley’ purple fingerlings from Norwich Meadows Farm, plus 2 large halved ‘yellow shallots’ from Norwich Meadows Farm, all tossed together in a bowl with less than two tablespoons of olive oil; sea salt; freshly-ground black pepper; one crushed piece of a mahogany-colored home-dried dark, dried heatless Habanada pepper acquired 2 summers before as fresh peppers from Norwich Meadows Farm; a really tiny dusting of a dried hickory smoked Jamaican Scotch bonnet peppers from Eckerton Hill Farm; and the leaves from several sprigs of rosemary from Eataly, everything arranged, without touching, on a large, well-seasoned Pampered Chef unglazed ceramic pan and roasted in a 400º oven for about 35 minutes, divided onto 2 plates, garnished with micro ruby red chard from Windfall Farms
  • bright red ripe shishito peppers from Norwich Meadows Farm, halved lengthwise, pith and seeds removed, sautéed in a little olive oil inside a large antique copper pot over a medium high flame until slightly carbonized, the flame reduced, a smal amount of chopped green celery stem and several quite small chopped scallions added and heated until softened, seasoned with salt and pepper and tossed with a bit of chopped winter savory from Stokes Farm
  • the wine was a French (Roussillon) red, Benjamin Darnault Roussillon Villages 2018, from Naked Wines
  • the music was Johann Georg Conradi’s 1691 opera, ‘Die Schöne und Getreue Ariadne’, the Boston Early Music Festival Chorus & Orchestra, with artistic co-directors Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs