This wonderfully-satisfying pasta dish should be an absolute cinch to put together, once some good fresh smoked eel has been located, but I seem to be married to the original recipe I had found a while back, even if I’ve modified it slightly since, and I still have to pay attention to its instructions and a sequence of the steps that seems not quite intuitive.

By the way, I halved the recipe this time, meaning I decided deliberately not to have leftovers for another day

Still, it really isn’t at all difficult, especially since I didn’t have to go out to some cold shore in early February with my ancient 7-foot Rhode Island eel fork.

• two large cloves of Rocambole garlic Keith’s Farm, sliced thinly, heated in a vintage high-sided, heavy, tin-lined copper pot over a medium-high flame, along with one whole dried pepper Itria-Sirissi chili, peperoncino di Sardegna intero from Buon Italia, until the garlic was almost starting to color, 11 ounces of smoked eel from P.E.& D.D. Seafood in the Union Square Greenmarket, skinned, debonedand broken into small pieces, added and tossed until warmed through, half of some savory pangrattato* prepared only a little earlier mixed in and combined with it, the cooked and drained pasta (8 ounces of Afeltra 100% grano italiano spaghetti, produced in Gragnano, from Eataly Flatiron), added to the pan, tossed with the eel and pangratto and stirred over low heat for a couple of minutes, just under a cup of the reserved pasta water gradually added while doing so, served in low bowls, where the pasta was sprinkled with more pangrattato and finished with chopped Japanese scallions from Norwich Meadows Farm

*For the preparation of the pangrattato about a third of a cup of homemade breadcrumbs were added to about a fourth of a cup of olive oil in which two thinly-sliced Keith’s Farm garlic cloves and 2 large salted anchovies from Buon Italia, rinsed and filleted, had been heated for a short while, then stirred for 4 or 5 minutes, the mixture then drained on paper toweling, bringing it back to room temperature

• the wine was an Italian (Marche) white, La Monacesca Verdicchio di Matelica 2013, from Garnet Wines & Liquors
• the music was Mozart and Da Ponte’s 1786 opera, ‘Le Nozze di Figaro’,  John Eliot Gardiner
  conducting the English Baroque Soloists and the Monteverdi Choir, with soloists Rodney Gilfry, Susan McCulloch, Carlos Feller, Bryn Terfel, Hillevi Martinpelto, Francis Egerton, Julian Clarkson, Constanze Backes, Lucinda Houghton, Pamela Helen Stephen, Sarah Connolly, and Alison Hagley

I always find it a treat to return to a squid dinner, both for the fun of the preparation and the enjoyment of the meal. This time we were also able to enjoy one of the most luscious greens ever, and here I have to pinch myself, because it really is the middle of winter.

• a large rectangular enameled cast iron pan heated on top of the stove until hot, its cooking surface brushed with olive oil, and once the oil was also quite hot, one pound of rinsed and carefully dried one pound of cleaned squid, including many tentacles, from Pure Vida Seafood, quickly arranged inside and immediately sprinkled with a heaping teaspoon of super-pungent dried Sicilian oregano from Buon Italia, most of one crushed dried Sicilian pepperoncino, also from Buon Italia, and one piece of dried orang/gold habanada pepper, crushed, sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper, followed by a drizzle of 3 tablespoons of organic juice from a Whole Foods lemon, and some olive oil, the pan placed inside a pre-heated 400º oven and roasted for only 5 minutes or a bit more, removed, the squid distributed onto 2 plates, ladled with a bit of their cooking juices, which had been transferred into a sauce pitcher
• pak choy (also called bok choy) from Norwich Meadows Farm, washed, sliced lengthwise, wilted in olive oil along with 2 Rocambole garlic cloves from Keith’s Farm which had already been browned very lightly in the oil, the greens seasoned with sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper and drizzled with a little more olive oil
• the wine was an Italian (Campania) white, Feudi di San Gregorio Greco di Tufo 2015, from Garnet Wines & Liquors
• the music was Mozart’s ‘Die Entführung aus dem Serail’, with John Eliot Gardiner conducting the English Baroque Soloists and the Monteverdi Choir

This was a sublime winter meal, and almost embarrassingly easy to put together.

I used a recipe, with almost no deviations, from a specialty cookbook I bought in Brooklyn almost as soon as I had learned that I could buy local goat cuts in the Union Square Greenmarket. The title is ‘Goat: Meat, Milk, Cheese‘ and the authors are Bruce Weinstein (he cooks) and Mark Scarbrough (he writes).

It was great fun, and even though our shanks were a little smaller than those described in the recipe, we were surprised to sit down to dinner roughly an hour and a half earlier than the recipe’s program had suggested: After quickly getting the braise together inside the pot I was looking forward to an interval during which I could catch up on writing or reading (about food, to be sure), but when I got up to check and stir the pot the second time, maybe 50 or 55 minutes into the 2 1/2 hours my guides had predicted it would take, I realized that the meat was nearly ready. I know it could have gone further, but not for an additional hour and a half, and the meat already offered no resistance when pierced with a metal tester.

I then worked rapidly on the rest of the meal, rushing the Brussels sprouts into the oven and quickly assembling the ingredients for the polenta, both of which might take 25 minutes. I knew the goat braise would be understanding, so there wasn’t any panic with the timing, and everything came together perfectly in the end.

The picture below shows what the shanks looked like just after I had replaced them in the pot in which they had earlier been browned then removed to the side, and after sautéing the vegetables, adding the chicken broth and white beans, and bringing the liquid to a simmer.

• for the goat braise, the only changes I made to the recipe, which I halved, were the addition of a medium-width 6-inch celery stalk, sliced, from Philipps Farms; a crushed piece of dark dried habanada pepper; and a reduction by roughly half in the cooking time it describes, so rather than re-enter the recipe text, I’ll only list the source of the ingredients I used: two goat shanks, weighing a total of 21 ounces, from Tony at Consider Bardwell Farm; 4 medium orange carrots from John D. Madura Farm; one small leek from Hawthorne Valley Farm; one mediium Rocambole garlic clove from Keith’s Farm; a tablespoon of fresh sage leaves from Philipps Farm; one teaspoon of zest from a Whole Foods Market organic lemon; 2 or 3 tablespoons of Few Spirits Breakfast Gin; one cup of low-sodium Better Than Bouillon chicken base; and almost one cup of Eden Foods organic cannellini beans
• polenta made using this excellent Mark Bittman recipe, ‘Polenta Without Fear‘, very gradually adding, while stirring, two thirds of a cup of coarsely-ground Iroquois White Corn Project white corn flour from the Greenmarket Regional Grains Project stall in the Union Square Greenmarket) to a pot in which 2 cups of water and 2/3 of a cup of excellent Trickling Springs Creamery milk from Whole Foods Market (the proportion always begins as 3 to 1, but additional fresh water will always have to be added along the way) had been brought to a boil, then stirred continually for about 15 or 20  minutes, and when the mixture was creamy and the cornmeal tasted cooked, seasoned with a pinch of salt, finished with several tablespoons of several 4  tablespoons of Organic Valley ‘Cultured Pasture Butter’, and properly seasoned with sea salt, garnished with a few small fresh sage leaves from Philipps Farm
• four good-size Brussels sprouts from Phillips Farms, washed, trimmed, dried, tossed with olive oil, sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper, roasted in a 400º oven on a small unglazed Pampered Chef oven pan until they were browned and crisp on the outside, or for about 20 minutes,
• the wine was an Italian (Puglia) red, Aglianico Polvanera 2009, from Garnet Wines & Liquors
• the music was Wagner’s 185-1861 ‘Tannhäuser’, Giuseppe Sinopoli conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden Chorus., with Agnes Baltsa, Andreas Schmidt, Placido Domingo, Matti Salminen, Kurt Rydl, Oskar Hillebrandt, Clemens Bieber, Cheryl Studer, Barbara Bonney, Margaret Stobart, Ingrid Baier, Jeanette Wilson, Karen Shelby, and William Pell

Yes, the meal began with a few oysters.

• eight oysters from the south shore of eastern Long Island, from American Seafood Company, described by the fish monger, when I asked for a name, as close to Blue Points, served on the half shell with nothing else but bread
• slices of a crusty mini baguette from Bread Alone

The images I took of the main course didn’t make the cut, so I’m only uploading some ‘before’ pictures of the sea bass, the garnish, and the vegetables, beginning with the sea bass as I found it in their bucket at the Union Square Greenmarket that afternoon, and then the two chosen ones resting on a platter before they were prepared for cooking.

The next images are of the egg used to coat the fillets, after it was whipped with some chopped parsley; the pea greens ,as they appeared in the market, that garnished the bass once it was on the plates; the halved potatoes, before they went into the oven; and the beautiful tender collards that accompanied the other ingredients.

• two 8-ounce fillets of black sea bass from Pura Vida Fisheries, dredged in some seasoned coarse stone-ground flour which had been spread across a plate, then dipped in a mixture of one Americauna chicken egg from Millport Dairy Farm which had been whipped with a few tablespoons of chopped parsley parsley from Westside Market, the fish sautéed for a couple of minutes in a mixture of butter and olive oil inside a vintage heavy, oval tin-lined copper pan, skin side down first, then turned, sautéed for another couple of minutes (until the fish was cooked through; the time will vary each time with the size of the fillets and the height of the flame), removed from the pan and the heat now turned off, placed on 2 warm plates, and what juices remained in the pan were scattered with some pea greens from Windfall Farms and pushed around with a wooden spatula for a moment, greens and juices then divided onto the top of the fillets, finishing with a squeeze of an organic lemon from Whole Foods, and dressed with more pea greens
• four oval medium Nicola potatoes from Hawthorne Valley Farm, scrubbed, halved unpeeled, tossed with a little olive oil, salt, pepper, a little picante Spanish paprika, a large pinch of dark home-dried habanada pepper, arranged cut side down on a small Pampered Chef unglazed ceramic pan, roasted at about 375º-400º for about 20 or 25 minutes, roasted at about 375º for about 20 or 25 minutes, arranged on the plates and sprinkled with chopped winter savory from Stokes Farm
• one bunch/spray of tender collard greens from Eckerton Hill Farm that had been grown in their greenhouse (it was still January), washed twice, drained, some of the water retained and held aside, to be added as the greens cooked, if necessary (it wasn’t this time) cut roughly, braised until gently wilted inside a heavy vintage, high-sided, tin-lined copper pot in which one halved Rocambole garlic from Keith’s Farm had been allowed to sweat over a low flame with some olive oil, finished with sea salt, freshly-ground black pepper, and a small drizzle of olive oil
• the wine was a French (Savoie) white, Denis & Didier Berthollier, Chignin Vieilles Vignes, 2015, from Flatiron Wines & Spirits
• the music was Helmut Lachenmann’s ‘Tanzsuite mit Deutschlandlied’, composed for string quartet and orchestra, performed by the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Jonathan Nott, and the Arditti Quartet