I wasn’t going to post this about meal, mostly because it was entirely improvised and I didn’t expect I’d remember what went into it, but then I realized that those might actually be good reasons for including it.

• two crab cakes from PE & DD Seafood (crab, egg, flour, red & green peppers, garlic, salt, pepper, breadcrumbs, mayonnaise, milk, celery, and parsley), seared/heated inside a cast iron pan in a little olive oil, 2 to 3 minutes on each side, served on 2 plates on top of a salsa composed of roughly-chopped Backyard Farms Maine ‘cocktail tomatoes’ from Eataly, a very small shallot from Norwich Meadows Farm, salt, freshly-ground black pepper, a bit of homemade French Basque piment d’Espellate purchased in a small town north of Baie-Comeau, Quebec last year from the producer’s daughter, a very small amount of dried Itria-Sirissi chili, peperoncino di Sardegna intero from Buon Italia, chopped oregano from Stokes Farm, the cakes drizzled with the juices left in the bottom of the bowl where the salsa had been mixed, and each topped with a couple dozen pine nuts from Whole Foods which had been been toasted first
• three very small leeks from Norwich Meadows Farm, washed, drained, dried, cut into quite small segments and sautéed until softened inside a large enameled cast iron pot in a little olive oil in which a teaspoon of Italian fennel seed had already been heated, some green radicchio (pan di zucchero?) from Tamarack Hollow Farm, shredded as a chiffonade, added to the pot and stirred until it had wilted some, the vegetables seasoned with salt and pepper, finished with chopped parsley from Gristedes, tarragon from Whole Foods, and a squeeze of local lemon from Fantastic Gardens of Long Island
• the wine was a French (Loire) white, Château la Berrière Muscadet Côtes de Grandlieu Sur Lie 2015, from Chelsea Wine Vault
• the music was Alfred Schnittke, ‘Symphony No. 3, the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin conducted by Vladimir Jurowski