Dinner was good, very good. While we were enjoying it I thought to myself, surprisingly good, but if I had considered our routinely good experiences with the terrific fresh swordfish we can get in Manhattan, I couldn’t have been surprised.

• one beautiful 16.5 ounce swordfish steak from American Seafood Company halved, marinated on an ironstone platter for about 45 minutes, turning once, in a mixture of a few tablespoons of olive oil, a teaspoon of chopped fresh, slowly drying, but still very sweet and pungent tarragon from Stokes Farm, a bit of peperoncino Calabresi secchia from Buon Italia, a small section of a home-dried habanada pepper, and the chopped white sections of one very small Japanese scallion from Norwich Meadows Farm, after which the swordfish was drained, both sides covered with a coating of homemade dried breadcrumbs, and pan-grilled over medium-high heat for 3 or 4 minutes on each side, or until barely (or, actually, not quite) cooked to the center, then removed from the pan and arranged on 2 plates, sprinkled with a little Maldon salt, some of the chopped greener parts of the scallion, drizzled with a bit of juice from a Whole Foods Market organic lemon and garnished with a little purple micro radish from Windfall Farms
• ten or so ounces of 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 with some Whole Foods house Portuguese olive oil, seasoned with Maldon salt and freshly-ground black pepper, tossed with some roughly cut lovage from Two Guys from Woodbridge
• two mid size red chicories (radicchio), that were something like a cross between treviso and tardivo, or what Chris and Jessi of Campo Rosso Farm have dubbed, ‘Rosa di Campo Rosso’, sliced broadly, sautéed until barely wilted inside an antique medium, high-sided tin-lined copper pot with a little olive oil in which one sliced Camelot shallot from Quarton Farm had already been heated until it had softened, seasoned with sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper, finished with a dash of balsamic vinegar, arranged on the plates, and drizzled with a little olive oil
• the wine, totally new to us, was a wonderful Greek (Mantinia/Peloponnese) white, Troupis Hoof and Lur 2017 [for a little about newer Greek wines, including this one, look here], from Copake Wine Works, which is also pretty new to us (we expect to regularly order more from them)
• the music was Tchaikovsky’s 1892 lyric opera, ‘Iolanta’, Emmanuel Villaume conducting the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra and the Slovenian Chamber Choir, with Anna Netrebko, Sergey Skorokhodov, Alexey Marko, and Vitalij Kowaljow