mullusk salad, mushroom pasta, shallot, celery, olive, pinoli

It was a great meal, with a good balance of flavors, textures, shapes, and colors. It was far better than I had anticipated, since it was pretty much arranged at the last moment.

It was also pretty carefree, since I had purchased the centerpieces of both courses already assembled.

The seafood salad purchased from a fisher’s stand at the Greenmarket can be tweaked in many ways, although so far I’ve not been very imaginative in presenting it..

  • eight ounces of a squid and conch salad, with olive oil, parsley, red pepper, and lemon juice, from P.E. & D.D. Seafood in the Union Square Greenmarket, made by Delores Karlin, the wife of Phil Karlin, the fisherman, drizzled with juice from an organic Chelsea Whole Foods Market lemon and a little sea salt, and freshly-ground black pepper, arranged in a bed of some very welcome local arugula (in January!) from Philipps Farms
  • slices from a loaf of bread from a Philadelphia bakery new to the Union Square market, Lost Bread Company‘s ‘Seedy Grains’ (wheat, spelt, rye, and barley organic bread flours; buckwheat; oats; flax sesame, sunflower, and pumpkin seeds; water, and salt)
  • the wine was an Italian (Sicily) white, Centopassi ‘Terre Rosse di Giabbascio’ Catarratto 2017, from Astor Wines

..and this delicious mushroom-filled ravioli is one of the most useful bases for improvising a meal that’s both tasty and easily assembled with ingredients available in the middle of a particularly-greens-starved winter.

  • ten ounces of Rana portobello mushroom-and-ricotta ravioli (filled rounds of thin pasta) from Eataly Flatiron, boiled al dente inside a large pot of well-salted water for 2 minutes, drained, slipped into a large high-sided vintage tin-lined copper pan in which one ‘yellow shallot’ from Norwich Meadows Farm, chopped sections of several small stalks of celery from Philipps Farms, and a pinch from a gorgeous dried hickory-smoked very hot Jamaican Scotch bonnet pepper from Eckerton Hill Farm had been briefly sautéed until the shallot and celery had softened a bit over a moderate flame in a tablespoon or so of olive oil, a bit of pasta water added along with the pasta and the mix stirred over a moderate to high flame until the liquid had emulsified, seasoned with sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper, a dozen or so pitted kalamata olives from Buon Italia stirred in, a few chopped celery leaves and a bit of chopped parsley from Philipps Farm, tossed in, the contents of the pot then placed in shallow bowls and finished with a drizzle of olive oil around the edges, a sprinkling of toasted pine nuts, and a garnish of micro red mustard from Two guys from Woodbridge
  • the wine was an Italian (Piedmont/Albi) red, Barbera d’Alba, Oddero 2015, also from Astor Wines