On Monday morning I didn’t feel like springing from bed early enough to have a decent chance at the selections offered at P.E. & D.D, Seafood, so I skipped the market altogether (that doesn’t happen very often) and decided my fallback would be pasta that night.

Later in the day however, while visiting Chelsea Market to pick up some staples at Buon Italia, I naturally found myself peeking in, first at Dickson Farmstand Meats, to see what they had to offer, and then at The Lobster Place, where I found some beautiful Spanish sardines. They sardines weren’t local, but they were clearly very fresh, a fish which is something of a novelty for us, and definitely in seafood territory, which is where we almost always expect to be on Mondays.

The image below is of the sardines and trimmings just before they were put into the oven.

And of course there were sides.

• six Spanish sardines from The Lobster Place, cleaned in front of me while I waited at the counter, cleaned by the staff at The Lobster Place, seasoned, placed inside an oiled ceramic dish exactly the size for accommodating them in one layer, sprinkled with lemon zest, Gaeta and black oil-cured olives from Buon Italia, pitted, a handful of sun gold tomatoes from Ryder Farm which were first pricked then baked beforehand for 15 minutes, and one small finely-chopped floral-scented orange Habanada pepper (heatless) from Norwich Meadows Farm, all drizzled with more olive oil, baked for 10 minutes in a 400º oven, served with a slight drizzle of olive oil and lemon segments
• two red potatoes (white flesh) from Lucky Dog Organic Farm, boiled, drained, dried in the pan, rolled in olive oil, scattered with a bit of sliced red scallion, a bit of crushed dried rosmarino di sicilia of Azienda Agricola Gandolfo Filippine, from Buon Italia, seasoned with Maldon salt and freshly-ground pepper, then sprinkled, once on the plates, with purple micro radish from Two Guys from Woodbridge
• wild arugula from Paffenroth Farms, dressed with a good Campania olive oil (Campania D.O.P. Penisola Sorrentina ‘Syrenum’), freshly-squeezed lemon, salt, and pepper
• the wine was an Italian (Sicily) white, Corvo Insolia 2014
• the music was Ferruccio Busoni’s ‘Doktor Faust’, performed by the Bavarian State Opera