We might have been satisfied with a single 10-ounce Spanish mackerel fillet rather than 2. It would have meant we’d each get only about 5 ounces of fish for dinner, which would have been a bit skimpy. The alternative was to bring home 2 of them, which is what I did on Friday.  They fit perfectly inside my favorite oval copper fish pan, but on the plates 10 ounces ended up looking like a lot of food, and I have to admit that sometimes too much of a good thing can be both good and too much.

Both of those, because, and even if, served with some gorgeous mushrooms.

And beautiful young beet greens.

• two Spanish mackerel fillets (a total of 20 ounces) from Pura Vida Fisheries, seasoned on both sides with salt and pepper, sautéed fairly gently with butter and a little olive oil inside a large, thick oval copper pan, flesh side first, then turned after about 3 minutes and the other side cooked for about the same length of time, removed and arranged across the center diameter of 2 plates when done, covered to keep warm (or, if convenient to do so, placed inside a barely-warm oven), 2 tablespoons of butter added to the pan, and then when the butter had melted about 8 ounces of roughly-chopped yellow oyster mushrooms from Blue Oyster Cultivation, tossed into the pan, sautéed, stirring, until lightly cooked, seasoned with sea salt and freshly-ground Tellicherry pepper, a couple tablespoons of chopped parsley from Norwich Meadows Farm, plus about a tablespoon (or a little more) of lemon juice added to the pan, everything briefly stirred with a wooden spatula, and the herbed mushrooms and their juices spooned on top of the mackerel, which was finished with a little more of the chopped parsley [the parsley appeared after the photo above was taken]
• some very sweet beet greens from Lucky Dog Organic Farm, wilted inside a large enameled cast iron pot with several halved garlic cloves (‘Calabrian Rose’ Rocambole garlic from Keith’s Farm), which had first been been allowed to sweat in olive oil, the vegetable seasoned with salt and pepper, arranged on the plates, and drizzled with fresh olive oil
• The wine was a California (grapes from the Sacramento River Delta with a small amount of Viognier from Lodi) white, Miriam Alexandra Chenin Blanc California 2016, by Alexandra Farber, from Naked Wines
• the music was Bruckner’s Symphony No. 3,  Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting the Orchestre Métropolitain