Author: james

dinner, December 25, 2009

smoked_eel_Blue_Moon_Fish

I had originally intended to finish with a quince purée the small rack of venison I had gotten from Ottomanelli this week, but I had been misinformed about the availability of quince this late in December.   Learning the truth only the day before yesterday I quickly decided to use pears, one of the alternatives suggested by the recipe (in “D’Artagnan’s Glorious Game Cookbook“).

I had begun marinating the meat the day before that, in olive oil and crushed black pepper, along with Greenmarket rosemary, sage, and bay leaves (yes, I bought a bay branch at the greenmarket!).

Yesterday, just before searing the rack and putting it in the oven for 20 minutes, I made the sauce, chopping up firm Bartlett and Bouree Bosc pears and cooking them until tender with carmelized sugar and a combination of good Spanish red wine vinegar and stock which had been greatly reduced.  The pear sauce was then puréed and kept warm.  When the ribs were finished I separated them and served each portion on top of a helping of the purée, with a good portion of concentrated sauce infused with demi-glace spooned onto the meat itself and flowing onto the fruit.

The potatoes and the kale were both brought home from the Greenmarket in recent days.  I found the kale in fact in the farmer’s by-then-almost-emptied wooden box, still frosted with the snow, now slightly crispy, from last week’s storm.

We had been listening to Bach’s Christmas Oratorio for much of the afternoon, but, not wanting to carry the traditional  holiday playlist too far, just as we sat down to dinner we started listening to Bernstein’s “Candide“.

So for now, in this small place, in this best of all possible, possible, possible worlds: 

  • smoked eel from the Greenmarket (Blue Moon Fish, Mattituck, Long Island) served on a plate with lemon wedges and a salad of arugula, endive, chopped Sicilian capers, chopped shallots, horseradish, crème fraiche, lemon and olive oil; accompanied by slices of Kara’s flax bread from Garden of Eden
  • rack of California venison on pear purée, sauced with a sweet and sour demi-glace-infused concentrate; accompanied by rosemary-roasted French Fingerling potatoes;  and Winterbor kale (“really juicy after frosts”) from Keith’s Farm in Westtown, New York
  • thin slice of pound cake with a scoop of Ronnybrook vanilla ice cream, sprinkled with chopped candied grapefruit from Garden of Eden
  • wines:  wine:  Ferrari-Carano Fumé Blanc 2008 with the first course, and Ridge York Creek California Zinfandel 2008, and Bogle Vinyards Old Vine Zinfandel 2007, both from Phillipe Wine

Keiths_Farm_Winterbor_Kale

Both yesterday’s lunch and this morning’s breakfast continued the holiday, or at least, winter, theme.   In the afternoon on December 25 I roasted some locally-grown Greenmarket chestnuts in a perforated pan on the top of our 1931 Magic Chef. This morning I spread some truly fantastic pumpkin preserves from Marlow & Daughters on some more of the flax bread, buttered this time.

chestnuts_Greenmarket

dinner, December 24, 2009

red_cabbage_Queens_County_Farm_Museum

Barry and I don’t really celebrate Christmas, or any other god-based holiday, but we can’t help cherishing some of the trappings of the ancient Christian feast days kept by our families while we were growing up.   Holiday meals are probably the most important survivors of his and my early conversions to irreligion, and those associated with December 24 and 25 are among those most worthy of our attentions.

So two nights ago I once again cleared off (six) two-foot high stacks of books from the top of the dining table in the large gallery, unfolded the top, pulled out the legs and set it for the fresh, light dinner described below.  It was designed to anticipate a slightly more ambitious, warmer and heavier spread the following day:

  • smoked trout which I had picked out at the Union Square Greenmarket just the day before (Max Creek Hatchery in East Meredith New York), arranged on the plate with endive leaves which cradled a shredded apple and horseradish sauce/salad, along with slices from a Portuguese Saloio roll (hand-formed, peasant bread) from Garden of Eden (baked by Elio’s Bakery, in Jersey City)
  • red cabbage salad:  two beautiful small heads of red (actually, pretty purple) cabbage from the Queens County Farm Museum stand at the Greenmarket, thinly-shredded and mixed with lingonberry preserves, walnut oil, sherry vinegar, roasted and roughly-chopped walnuts, served garnished with julienne strips of the same Greenmarket-purchased New York-native Newtown Pippin apple included in the previous course, along with slices of a round loaf of dark flax-seed bread from Garden of Eden (Kara Bakery in Brooklyn), fresh butter and Manchego and Roncal cheeses  (from Murray’s Cheese);  the recipe for the entree was one adapted from Kurt Gutenbrunner and printed in the Times December 9.

Max_Creek_Hatchery_trout_sign

of red food, and dinner, December 12, 2009

Japanese_sweet_potatoes_Lani

Is it just me, or are there for sure a lot of pink-to-red-to-purple foods around at this time of year?

Over the last several weeks I’ve recently seen, prepared and served at home, in addition to tuna, of course, the usual meat suspects (including the smoked or cured) and the red or purple berries and fruit now only a memory, red beets, red chard, red mustard and kale, the red stems of beet greens, radicchio, pink, red or purple radishes, red onions, purple tomatoes and red potatoes, red sweet potatoes [see the Japanese sweets above, from Lani’s Farm] red cabbage, purple cauliflower and purple broccoli, and even purple kohlrabi.   And then there was also the bounty of the season just past:  tomatoes (red and sometimes even purple) available much later this year than in others, purple lettuces, red or purple bell peppers, and both purple string beans and purple okra.

I only became consciously aware of the red thing going on after plating several meals this fall.  The color scheme of last night’s dinner was similar to many of them, although, as with most, I managed also to include at least some green.

three inspired by Marlow & Daughters

Marlowe_&_Daughters

(probably not your mother’s butcher:  a detail of the meat case at Marlow & Daughters)

Marlow & Daughters

The post which appears just before this one describes a dinner which, although it did not include meats from the Williamsburg butcher shop Marlow & Daughters, was almost a natural segue from the three meals which immediately preceded it, which did.  The connection is their components, which were importantly either blood or liver (discouraging all but the heartiest meat eating readers), specifically the blood sausage in the Huevos Flamencos and the poached links of lamb liver sausage which dominated the meal the previous night.

It was only a coincidence that we had also enjoyed lunches with two different kinds of delicious liverwurst sandwiches on Monday and Tuesday (thanks again to the Union Square Greenmarket and the people at Flying Pigs Farm), but it appears that in those four days we were deep inside territory many might consider (excuse the pun) too gutsy for their taste.

The lamb liver sausage was the third in a series of dinners inspired by our visit to Marlow & Daughters on Sunday after our afternoon visiting Williamsburg galleries.  We’ve long been fans of the restaurants Diner and Marlow & Sons, which share a connection with each other and with Tom Mylan, their former in-house butcher.  Now Mylan is a food blogger, and has his own Broadway meat shop, for which he purchases only local, pasture-raised whole animals and then butchers them on-site.   The meat can often be cut to order, and there’s a generous charcuterie selection.

We had been reading exciting things about his independent venture and had been impressed with Mylan’s appearance on NPR’s “All things considered” last spring, but hadn’t actually visited the site until now.

On Sunday we brought home two beautiful, thick, sirloin steaks.   They looked like giant tournedos to me, but still somehow managed to tip the scales at only about 6 ounces each.  Perfect.    It was almost closing time when we arrived, but when the butcher I spoke to saw how disappointed I was that there was only one steak left in the counter, he told us that if we could wait a few minutes he’d cut two in any size we wanted from a large slab of dry-aged beef he had in the cooler.  Wow.  I was impressed.

It took me all the way back to the little full-service Italian grocery store down the street from the house where I grew up, in pre-breakdown Detroit:  I was probably thirteen or fourteen, and my first (after-school) job was as a stock boy and bag packer at “Nino’s Market” (it was probably only the size of our Manhattan apartment), and I clearly remember that, after the manager, who was the proud and very hot young son of the owner, the butcher was treated like a God!

I’ve never been afraid of meat since.

We also bought half a pound of beautiful house-cured guanciale, since it seemed about time for Pasta alla Gricia once again.  We never tire of that dish, which ideally includes properly-cured pork jowl, but a number of different pasta choices (we usually use a penne).  We first enjoyed it in 1996, in the form of Spaghetti alla Gricia, while sitting at a table on the street outside the Piccola Trattoria da Lucia, in Rome’s Trastevere (Chiuso il lunedì).    We went back to the Vicolo del Mattonato two days later, and at least once again the next time we were in Rome one year later (the founder’s son, Renato Bizzarri, who succeeded his mother in running the restaurant, recognized us as soon as we sat down).

Back at Marlow & Daughters, I looked around for lamb, and was sorry to hear from another butcher that the shop was altogether out of it.  Then he told me that he did have some lamb liver sausage in the back and wondered if it might interest us.   He was asking the right guys:  we were both game, and of course the medium-dark, purply sausage itself looked and smelled like game.  I knew I already had the wintry vegetables which would complement it.  We asked him to wrap up two links (11 or 12 ounces total).

The small shop also has some great cheeses, a small selection of pickles and preserves, milk, some fresh vegetables and fruit, and a carefully-selected assortment of dry food products.  Heaven.

This is a more complete description of our three Marlow & Daughters meals, whose vegetable ingredients (as well as the ice cream) were all gathered from the Union Square Greenmarket:

dinner, December 8, 2009

upland_cress_Paffenroth

dinner, December 9, 2009

penne_rigate_Rao

dinner, December 10, 2009

mustard_greens_red_frisee

[image at the top from Rotating Corpse]

dinner, December 9, 2009

Morcilla_Y_Chorizo

Thanksgiving dinner, November 26, 2009

yellow-stem_chard

Many weeks back some friends of ours in Brooklyn had invited a dozen people to share Thanksgiving with them.  We were very happy to be included, but our hosts’ plans had to be canceled only days before the event because of a death in the family.  Our fallback was to prepare a dinner at home.  Unable to find guests at such short notice who were not already committed elsewhere, we had to re-think our favorite harvest féte as a much smaller affair than we would have preferred.

I would probably have eschewed turkey even if we had guests, but since if seemed we were going to be only two at dinner, I tried to think of an alternative which might be as appropriate as the archetypal American turkey but taste even better.   I picked out a small Muscovy Duck, or Canard de Barbarie [original to South and Central America] at Ottomanelli‘s on Monday.  Today, Thursday, with a few appropriate “trimmings”, it did its special magic, introducing a hint of “the wild” into a very domestic holiday.

In the end the main course at least turned out to be more French than American.   But, upholding one of the traditions of the day, we did manage to have some leftovers, although the vegetables were not among them.

  • a potage assembled from pumpkin, apple cider and red onion, served dribbled with cider syrup
  • wine:  Boyer Brut Blanc de Blancs from Sherry-Lehmann [although Eleonora Riesling Halbtrocken, from our stock of sparkling Mosels, by Christoph von Nell would probably have been better with the earthy sweetness of this dish]
  • Muscovy duck [canard de Barbarie] roasted on a bed of cut-up carrots, celery and onion, with a pan sauce made from the reduced cooking juices;  accompanied by turnips from Healthway Farms in the Union Square Greenmarker, braised in butter [navets à l’étuvée] and finished with drops of lemon and chopped parsley;  and sauteed yellow-stem chard [bette à carde] from Lani’s Farm, also in the Greenmarket, finished with oil and lemon
  • wine:  a very nice Pomerol, Chateau Vray Croix de Gay [awesome name!] 2006, a terrific bargain purchased on line from K&D Wines and Spirits, in a very good Bordeaux sale
  • mince pie from Windy Maples Farm at the Union Square Greenmarket, served with a dollop of Ciao Bella vanilla gelato

dinner, November 21, 2009

Red_Chard_Lani

Purple_Peruvian_Potatoes

When it includes meat or fish I usually serve the main course of a meal with only one, possibly two vegetables, both for simplicity and to concentrate attention on complementary choices I hope I’d chosen judiciously.

On Saturday night however, I had a larder slightly swollen after a splurge with the bounty of the late fall Union Square Greenmarket.  To accompany a small 10 oz. Newport steak from Citarella which would serve both of us, I found I had some Purple Peruvian Potatoes from the stall of Paffenroth Gardens, a bouquet of what we learned was some very sweet red chard from that of Lani’s Farm (formerly known as Yuno’s Farm), and some late-season San Marzano tomatoes from, I think, Bill Maxwell’s farm, which had finally ripened sufficiently on our north windowsill.

They all came together to make one of the most vibrantly-colorful plates I’d ever seen, in a “one-dish meal” that was also totally delicious.

  • Italian oil-cured black olives and Roberto Torinese breadsticks, both from Garden of Eden
  • Newport steak pan-grilled and finished with oil and a squirt of lemon; accompanied by Purple Peruvian Potatoes baked in the oven with oil, sprigs of rosemary and plenty of sea salt; braised red chard finished with oil and lemon; and grilled seasoned halves of plum tomatoes finished with Balsamic vinegar
  • wine:   Obra Prima, Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve 2005 from Mendoza, Argentinia, Familia Cassone, the generous gift of a friend, from Chelsea Wine Vault

golden cherry tomatoes, tomatillos, lovage

Maxwell_farm_lovage

Bill_Maxwell_golden_cherry_tomatoes

Maxwell_farm_tomatillos

I’ve recently discovered that there really is life beyond salsa for the lowly tomatillo.

The other day I found myself with some golden cherry tomatoes which really had to be made a part of a meal before it was too late.  I happened to check out the crisper drawer in the refrigerator at just about the same time.  Down at the bottom I found three tomatillos I had completely forgotten I had, having neglected to register them on my critical kitchen perishables list the day I had brought them home from Bill Maxwell’s stand at the Greenmarket several weeks earlier.

[Note to all shoppers:  I’m finding that Maxwell’s (Mondays at Union Square) can mean virtually one-stop shopping – and talking to good folks too.]

I was about to throw the tomatillos in the garbage, but I decided to check them out first.  I knew almost nothing about the vegetable, including how long they could be stored and where they should be stored.  I cut a thin slice and discovered perfect bliss.  It looked like jade and it tasted like candy.

I had been trying to come up with for something which would complement grilled swordfish with a Salmoriglio sauce and some braised red kale.  Maybe it was the thought of combining the two colors more than anything else that inspired the salad which I assembled from the tomatoes and the tomatillos, but it totally hit the mark.   By chance I had some fresh lovage, also picked up at Maxwell’s stand, although more recently, and as I’ll put lovage on just about anything, I hardly had to think for a second before I added the leafy herb to the mix.

Here’s the real deal:

Thinly slice some ripe tomatillos and cut some ripe golden cherry tomatoes in half, combine with a liberal amount of chopped lovage, some good olive oil, a bit of fresh lemon juice, salt and, ideally, pink peppercorns (I love pink peppercorns and watch for any opportuity where they might shine), although black or white pepper will do just fine.  Enjoy.

dinner, October 27, 2009

I’ve always been fond of skate, and it probably has little to do with the fact that I’m surprised to learn over and over again just how much the taste is unlike that of most any other fish.   But it does, and it is.  Prepared along the lines of an old Mark Bittman posting in the New York Times, tonight’s entree both looked and tasted very little like fish and more like very light whipped potatoes dribbled with a delicate but complex brown sauce (gravy).   Bittman writes that halibut steaks and fillets, or most any other firm, white-fleshed fish will respond to the same treatment, “but the substitution is not perfect”.

Tonight it was perfect;  the fish was very fresh, the other ingredients in its preparation just about the best possible.

The accompaniments were mostly a matter of what looked good in the market (Manhattan Fruit), and although they seem to me now an odd choice, they worked very well together.  I think we were dining somewhere in Savoy/Savoie/Savoia/Savoyen.

Have you ever noticed how a skate wing, when stretched to its limit, looks exactly like the wing of a bird?  This afternoon was a first for me.

  • locally-caught skate fillet (one wing, expertly separated from the cartilage by the fish seller at Lobster Place inside Chelsea Market) quickly sauteed in a pan and removed, with butter and [Linden] honey added to the pan first, swirled briefly until browned, followed by some very large Lipari capers (Buon Italia, also in Chelsea Market) swirled into the pan, the thickened sauce then poured over the fish and the pan returned to the range where a few drops of Chardonnay vinegar were added, swirled and also poured over the fish, which was then garnished with some chopped parsley and lovage;   baked pommes frites  (medium red new potatoes);   sauteed cavolo nero (black cabbage)
  • wine:  Sauvignon Blanc, a white Loire (Chavignol), Petit Bourgeois 2008 from Henri Bourgeois

dinner, July 22, 2009

heirloom_tomatoes_cherry_lane_farms

Except for the cheese, the lemon, the oil and the bread (oh and the wine, too), everything in this meal came from the Union Square Greenmarket today, including the fish.

  • appetizer of fresh goat cheese (that which remained from last night’s salon, and I didn’t note its source) on red-stem dandelion greens, both drizzled with oil and seasoned with Maldon salt and freshly-ground black pepper, lemon splashed onto the dandelions , sharing a plate with a colorful mixture of early heirloom tomatoes from Cherry Lane Farms, also drizzled with oil but then covered with torn basil;  with it, some thin slices from a multi-grain and multi-seeded ficelle from Garden of Eden.
  • tuna steak from the Blue Moon Fish stall (although actually taken not from the Blue Moon, but from the F/S Bookie), seasoned with salt and pepper and paved with a mixture of  crushed fennel seed and red pepper, grilled briefly and then sprinkled with oil and lemon (an extremely-simple from the excellent “Italian Easy:  Recipes from the London River Cafe“);  accompanied  by sauteed rainbow chard (the chard found at the stand of Evolutionary Organics from New Paltz) which was finished with lemon and crushed dried hot pepper seeds.
  • wine:  a Galician, Martin Codax Albariño 2007 (Rias Baixas) D.Otuna_fv_bookie