I’m leading this post with an image and a description of the second course from last night’s dinner, since in the last few days I’ve already written – twice – about what was basically the same appetizer, except for the greens that accompanied it.
Yes, it was very, very good; Tuesday’s meal marked the final appearance of our supply of a wonderful smoked fish pâté.
- a composed smoked fish salad, more like a pâté, composed almost entirely of fish, all caught off Long Island by Phil Karlin, whose wife, Dolores Karlin, prepared it, consisting of several white fish species, mayonnaise, red onion, and celery, from P.E. & D.D. Seafood Company (the salad was perfectly seasoned, and needed no adjustments), served on slices of a loaf of ‘table bread’ from Philadelphia’s Lost Bread Co. that had been toasted over an open gas flame on our ‘Camp-A-Toaster’
- a spray of organic hydroponically-grown upland cress from Two Guys from Woodbridge, dressed with some good unfiltered olive oil from the 6th Avenue Trader Joe’s Market, Maldon salt, some ground black pepper, and a drizzle of organic lemon juice from Chelsea Whole Foods Market
For the main course I had thought I’d be working with one of the several packages of really good local pasta I had on hand, but none seemed right for what I had already chosen to cook with it. so I ended up using an Afeltra rigatoni. It reminded both of us of just how really good an artisanal Italian pasta can be.
- one small ‘yellow shallot’ from Norwich Meadows Farm heated gently in a little olive oil inside a large antique copper pot until it had softened, 8 ounces of Rigorosa Gragnano rigatoni from Eataly Flatiron, cooked al dente, mixed in, the heat turned up high and nearly a cup of reserved pasta water added and stirred with the oil and shallot until the liquid had emulsified, followed by a small handful of black olives (a mix of Gaeta and Kalamata) and 2 finely-chopped stalks and leaves of baby celery from Windfall Farms, a pinch of crushed dried hickory-smoked Jamaican Scotch bonnet pepper from Eckerton Hill Farm, sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, the mix stirred before it was arranged inside 2 shallow bowls, where some well-toasted pine nuts, or pinoli, from Buon Italia were tossed on top, the pasta finished with a bit of olive oil drizzled around edges
- the wine throughout the meal was one of our regular favorites, an Italian (Marche) white, Le Salse, Verdicchio di Matelica, 2016, from Flatiron Wines
- the music throughout was our second listening to a mid-seventeenth century Venetian masterpiece, Francesco Cavalli’s ‘La Calisto‘, conducted by René Jacobs