smoked fish pâté; mackerel, tomato salsa; new potatoes

There were two courses, and it was a two fish meal, maybe more than two.

The first course might have included more than one species of white fish..

a composed smoked fish salad, or pâté, using local fish caught by Phil Karlin of P.E. & D.D. Seafood Company, whose wife, Dolores is the one who makes it, more than likely consisting of more than one kind of white fish that had been smoked by a colleague; mayonnaise; red onion; and celery (the salad was perfectly seasoned), served on slices of a rich, loaf of ‘Table Bread’ from Philadelphia’s Lost Bread Co. that had been toasted over an open gas flame on our ‘Camp-A-Toaster’ only seconds before it arrived on the table

some watercress from Lucky Dog Organic Farm, dressed with Badia a Coltibuono, Monti del Chianti olive oil from Chelsea Whole Foods Market, juice from a Chelsea Whole Foods Market organic lemon, sea salt, and freshly ground black pepper

..but the second clearly featured a single fish, Spanish mackerel.

fourteen ounces of Spanish mackerel (2 long fillets) from Pura Vida Seafood, washed, dried, brushed lightly with olive oil and seasoned with sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper, pan grilled over high heat for 7 or 8 minutes, the skin side down first, turned over half way through, removed and arranged on the plates with a salsa consisting of 8 ounces or so of delicious, perfectly ripe cherry tomatoes from Stokes Farm, “The Best Cherry Tomatoes” (they really are, and almost as good when they’ve been grown in the greenhouse as they well be in the summer), that were halved, tossed with a tablespoon of Whole Food Market’s Portuguese house olive oil, a little more than a teaspoon of Sicilian salted capers (first well rinsed and drained), half a tablespoon of lemon juice, salt, black pepper, and some chopped fresh oregano from Phillips Farms, garnished on the plates with a little more oregano

sixteen ounces of delicious ‘new potatoes’ [immature potatoes, probably ‘red thumb’ in this case, harvested by pulling out the young tubers by hand, leaving the plant itself in place] from Norwich Meadows Farm, boiled with a generous amount of salt until barely cooked through, drained, halved, dried while still in the still-warm vintage medium size Corning Pyrex Flameware blue-glass pot in which they had cooked, rolled around inside the pot in a little more than a tablespoon or so of Whole Foods Market house Portuguese olive oil, sprinkled with salt and pepper, garnished with micro red ribbed dandelion from Windfall Farms
a small handful of tiny first-of-the-season purple snow peas from Norwich Meadows Farm, sautéed inside a small blue Pyrex Flameware skillet in a little olive oil, sprinkled with a little lemon zest, tossed with spearmint from Phillips Farms and seasoned with salt and pepper