The very fine basic recipe runs like a reliable thread through every appearance of this delicious dish I’ve been calling, ‘Bluefish Greek style’, but slight variations in the ingredients always make it seem new. It also seems to taste better every time, and I don’t think anything more can be asked of a recipe.

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• seven small 2-ounce bluefish fillets from Pura Vida Seafood Company in the Union Square Greenmarket, rinsed, rubbed with olive oil and a little Columela Rioja 30 Year Reserva sherry vinegar, seasoned with local Long Island sea salt from P.E. & D.D. Seafood and freshly-ground black pepper,  placed inside an antique 13″ tin-lined low-sided copper pan, sprinkled liberally with a very pungent dried Sicilian oregano from Buon Italia and a bit of finely chopped jalapeno pepper from our local Foragers Market, covered with thin slices of most of a medium size fresh red onion from Quarton Farm, thin slices of a ripe red heirloom tomato from Eckerton Hill Farm, 9 pitted Kalamata olives from Flatiron Eataly, and very thin slices of a Mexican organic Whole Foods Market lemon, the pan placed inside a 425º oven and baked for maybe 8 minutes [the fillets were quite small], the fillets arranged on the plates and garnished with micro red amaranth from Two Guys from Woodbridge [I had bought a few ounces of feta cheese to include on top of the bluefish, but then I forgot to add it]
• two different kinds of young potatoes, the 3 ‘white potatoes’ from Jersey Farm Produce that I had remaining and 8 or so ‘red potatoes’ from Lani’s Farm, boiled, unpeeled, with a generous amount of salt until barely cooked through, drained, the white potatoes quartered, dried while inside the still-warm vintage medium size Corning Pyrex Flameware blue-glass pot in which they had cooked, rolled around there in a little Whole Foods Market house Portuguese olive oil and some chopped summer savory from Lucky Dog Organic Farm
• the wine was a California (Lodi) white, Evangelos Bagias Lodi Chardonnay 2018, from Naked Wines
• after dinner I had a liqueur, a glass of L’Anisetta Meletti, straight; Barry had a rye whiskey
• the music was Mozart’s ‘Die Zauberflöte’, Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting theChamber Orchestra of Europe and the RIAS Kammerchor in a magnificent performance graced with a beautifully engineered recording on @DGclassics

 

*Where’s Waldo? can you find the soft shell blue crab in the picture?