Last night we celebrated Barry’s newly-restored ability – after two successive carpal tunnel operations – to cut his food using both hands.

It was a great steak! The fact that everything else on the plates as well had at least some red in it was purely coincidence.

The fact that the beef was more rare-to-medium-rare than merely medium-rare was also not by design, but fortunately for us this delicious Black Angus cut took very well to that option.

• a Black Angus rib eye/Delmonico steak (.91 lbs) from Greg and Mike of Sun Fed Beef (Maple Avenue Farms) in the Union Square Greenmarket, brought to room temperature, dried very well, seasoned with a generous amount of freshly roughly-ground black pepper, placed on a very hot cast iron pan grill for just about 10 or 12 minutes, turning twice, salting each side after it had been seared, removed and arranged on the plates, a little juice from an organic Whole Food Market lemon squeezed on top, sprinkled with some chopped fresh thyme from Citarella and dried Sicilian organic wild fennel pollen from Buon Italia, drizzled with a little olive oil and garnished with purple micro radish from Two Guys from Woodbridge

• eight ounces of celeriac from Norwich Meadows Farm and about the same weight in medium size German butterball potatoes from Norwich Meadows Farm, scrubbed, peeled, and cut into crescent wedges, tossed inside a large bowl with a little olive oil, a half teaspoon of Spanish paprika picante, a small crushed section of medium-dark dried habanada pepper, sea salt, and freshly-ground black pepper, spread onto a medium-size Pampered Chef unglazed ceramic pan [the image above was taken at that moment], roasted at 400º until brown, crispy on the edges, and cooked through
• a small amount of red chard from Citarella (some of the leaves had unaccountably frozen in the crisper, so I had first removed those sections, which accounts for the small portion), wilted in a little olive oil in which one halved Rocambole garlic clove from Keith’s Farm had first been heated and slightly softened, seasoned with sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper, and finished with a drizzle of Portuguese olive oil from Whole Foods Market and a bit of lemon juice
• the wine was a California (Los Carneros) red, Sin Fronteras Los Primos Red Wine California 2016, from Naked Wines
• the music was a modern reconstruction/pastiche of a 1739 opera by Handel, ‘Giove in Argo’, once thought to have been totally lost, Alan Curtis conducting Il Complesso Barocco