Some of our most delicious meals have been about squid, and their friends, and this was one of the most delicious.
- inside a large rectangular enameled cast iron pan heated on top of the stove until hot, the cooking surface brushed with olive oil, and once the oil was also quite hot, one pound of rinsed and carefully dried baby squid from Pura Vida Seafood quickly arranged inside, immediately sprinkled with a heaping teaspoon of super-pungent dried Sicilian oregano from Buon Italia, 3 small fresh seasoning peppers (a yellow and a green grenada pepper from Eckerton Hill Farm and a habanada from Norwich Meadows Farm), sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper, followed by a douse of 3 tablespoons of juice from an organic Whole Foods lemon, and a splash of olive oil, the pan placed inside a pre-heated 400º oven and roasted for only about 5 minutes, by which time their little bodies had ballooned, the pan removed and the squid distributed onto 2 plates, ladled with their cooking juices after they had been transferred to a footed glass sauce sauce boat
- wild cress from Lani’s Farm, bathed in several changes of water, left undressed
- two Backyard Farms Maine ‘cocktail tomatoes’ from Whole Foods Market, halved, placed face down on a small plate spread with sea salt and black pepper, pan grilled, sprinkled with bits of a few cut fresh tarragon leaves from Stokes Farm, then drizzled with a little olive oil
- ten or eleven ounces of ounces of ‘pinto’ potatoes from Norwich Meadows Farm, scrubbed, boiled unpeeled in generously-salted water until barely cooked through, drained, halved, dried in the still-warm large vintage Corning Pyrex Flameware blue-glass pot in which they had cooked, tossed there with some Portuguese house olive oil from Whole Foods, seasoned with Maldon salt and black pepper, then tossed with some roughly cut sorrel from Windfall Farms, arranged on the plates, sprinkled with fresh, unheated sorrel for a brighter green finish
- the wine was a delightful Italian (Campania) white, Feudi di San Gregorio Falanghina 2017 from Garnet Wines
- the music was the entertainment of kings, the 2014 Les Editions Arts Florissants album, ‘Le Jardin de Monsieur Rameau’
[image at the bottom from Musicesferas]