Since Thursday is not a Union Square Greenmarket day, it was one of our between-fish-meals meals.

We always have a variety of dried pastas in the apartment, and one of them is very often the fallback for these nights; this time I decided to use half of one of the two packages of croxetti I had in the larder.

It would also be a dinner that would include many ingredients, then at their peak, that I’d have difficulty incorporating into other meals in time: some small heirloom tomatoes, a wonderful local chèvre, some very modern very American bread, a handful of red-vein sorrel, and the heel of a Parmesan cheese wheel segment.

• six or eight different kinds of small heirloom tomatoes from Rise & Root Farm, sliced, arranged overlapping on top of a few very large leaves of arugula from Windfall Farms that had been drizzled with a little good olive oil, Renieris Estate ‘Divina’ (Koroneiki varietal olives), from Hania, Crete, purchased at Whole Foods Market, a small amount of Consider Bardwell Farm chèvre, ‘Mettawee’ crumbled over the tomatoes, sprinkled with torn peppermint from Keith’s Farm, more olive oil added on the top

• slices of Lost Bread Co.‘s awesome New England-style(?) Homadama (wheat, corn, water, maple syrup, salt, slaked lime)

The tomato salad functioned as an antipasto, and there actually was a primi this time, but no secundo.

• three or four ounces of butter melted over medium heat inside a large antique copper pot, introducing one crushed  golden orange dried habanada pepper and one chopped shallot from Alex’s Tomato Farm (in the Saturday Chelsea’s Down to Earth Farmers Market on West 23rd Street), heating the pan for a while, adding about half a teaspoon of sea salt, a bit of freshly-ground black pepper, and some chopped parsley from Phillips Farms before 8 or 9 ounces of a package of Genovese Alta Valle Scrivia Croxetti, which I believe came from Eataly, cooked al dente, was tossed in and everything stirred over a medium to high flame with some reserved pasta water until the liquid had emulsified, some roughly chopped red-vein sorrel from Norwich Meadows Farm slipped in and stirred with the pasta, which was then arranged inside 2 shallow bowls, a bit of olive oil drizzled around the edges, topped with a shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano Vache Rosse from Eataly
• the wine was an Italian (Piedmont/Cortese di Gavi) white, Lombardo Giordano 2018 Gavi di Gavi Vigna San Martino, from Chambers Street Wines
• the music was the ECM album, ‘PRISM I’, the Danish String Quartet performing works by Beethoven, Bach, Shostakovich