Month: July 2017

  • hake, potato, laurel, oil-cured olives; fennel, shallot, tomato

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    Normally this would not be a meal we could enjoy in the summer, although it’s a meal we always enjoy a lot. Last night the air was relatively cool, and remembering that it’s a recipe Barry likes to call ‘comfort food’, I decided to sneak it into the last week of July. There were potatoes, and, in a side dish more…

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  • dogfish/palombo al vino bianco; grilled tomatoes; potatoes

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    I’m leading here with the ‘before’ picture this time because I think it’s a really good illustration of how I could have been seduced by a fillet from something called a ‘dogfish’ (NOTE: the market prefers to describe it as ‘sand shark’). The image is of a one-pound fillet, after it had been halved, lying on our kitchen counter yesterday…

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  • carciofi ravioli, habanada, heirloom tomato, micro scallion

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    While I usually pull out a package of filled pasta because it simplifies making a meal choice, we also really enjoy them, and they still offer the possibility of individualizing them, sometimes with creative additions. This simple artichoke-filled ravioli was a good example. The sauce was superb, as the picture may suggest. Most of the credit has to go…

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  • monkfish, caper butter, tarragon; pan-grilled eggplant, basil

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    I did it again.  I mean a recipe that was totally new to me 2 weeks ago. The first time it was so terrific I knew I’d be back soon. I did it again on Wednesday. I thought it turned out very well, but although I had followed all procedures pretty much the same as I had…

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  • spaghetti olio e peperoni e finocchio, no acciughe

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    The meal was something of a break from the at least relative intensity of some of those that have appeared on our table recently; it really was a very simple, totally unstressful construction. It mostly included things already in the larder, but I added a small fennel bulb, because it was there, and because I knew that…

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  • whelk salad; flounder with tomato butter; romano beans

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    It was one of those times when I left the meal without a decent image of it. I still wanted to write something, so I decided to upload images of the 2 main ingredients that I might find on line, as a fallback, something I had occasionally done in the past. Then I learned that one of our…

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  • lemon-roasted pork chop; grilled heirloom tomatoes, herbs

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    Everything looks great together, but it all tasted even better, and actually this is one of the easiest imaginable entrées to prepare. Virtually no skill required – other than a modest talent for food shopping. I’ve written before that I think the approach I used here, and have used many times before, may be the best way to treat a good…

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  • breakfast with a few herbs and spices, and Luigi Rossi

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    What we enjoy early on Sundays (well, not really so early, and not every Sunday) is basically an American kitchen table or diner counter breakfast, except that the ingredients are always very fresh and very local, and the extras would be at least a little exotic on most plates. today there were eggs from pastured Pennsylvania chickens…

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  • pollock, ramps, lemon, capers; cucumber, fennel, tomato

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    Pollock is another fish that deserves far more respect than it gets, even these days, and even on its home shores. one pollock fillet (18.25 oz) from American Seafood Company in Chelsea’s Down to Earth Farmers Market, rinsed, dried, cut into 2 sections, seasoned on both sides with sea salt and freshly-ground Tellicherry pepper, placed inside…

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  • garlic/chili/spring shallot-basted tilefish, zest; okra; chard

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    It’s not really much “like lobster”, as some would have it, but it is a sweet fish, in more than one sense. I’ve written a bit about tilefish in an earlier post. It’s difficult to imagine that it was once included within that hoary commercial seafood classification, ‘trash fish’, along with, among others species I would now consider delicacies,…

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