It’s one of our favorite dishes. Last night I tweeted that it was the definition of savory. I think the pictures show us why. The one below is of the potatoes just before they went into the oven, preceding the black olives and the monkfish by 20 minutes or so.

• twelve or 14 ounces of scrubbed, dried, and thinly sliced ‘red thumb’ potatoes from Norwich Meadows Farm, arranged, overlapping, on the bottom of a glazed earthenware oven pan, covered with 3 tablespoons, or slightly more, of a Chelsea Whole Foods house Portuguese olive oil, seasoned with sea salt, freshly-ground black pepper, a pinch of an Eckerton Hill Farm crushed dried hickory smoked Jamaican Scotch bonnet pepper, the same amount of a dried habanada pepper, and 9 whole Italian bay leaves from Buon Italia scattered on top, and then more oil (another 2 tablespoons or so) poured over everything, the pan placed inside a 400º oven for about 20 or 25 minutes, or until the potatoes had begun to brown on the edges, then almost two thirds of a cup of mostly pitted Sicilian black oil-cured olives from Buon Italia and a few kalamata olives from Whole Foods [fewer olives would definitely not make the flavors of the entrée suffer, but this amount is luscious] were scattered about them, and one halved 15-ounce monkfish tail from P.E. & D.D. Seafood was placed on top of everything, the fish sprinkled with salt and pepper, and the pan returned to the oven for another 15 minutes or so more (the ‘tails’ were pretty thick), or until the monkfish was tender but not overcooked (I used an instant thermometer and 140º as the final say), arranged on the plates garnished with a little micro purple mustard from Norwich Meadows Farm

• a generous amount of fava bean greens, stems and leaves, from Keith’s Farm, washed in several changes of cold water, drained, gradually stirred into a large, heavy, antique copper pot in a tablespoon or more of olive oil already heated above a medium flame where a bit of spring garlic had been allowed to soften, and once the greens had wilted, a generous amount of roughly-chopped spearmint from Phillips Farms was tossed in, followed by a bit of sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper
• the wine was a French (Languedoc-Roussillon) white, Vin Blanc, La Patience 2017, from Astor Wines
• the music was the Peter Eötvös album, ‘Concertos’