It was a wonderful dinner.

• one swordfish steak (19 ounces) from Pura Vida Seafood Company in the Union Square Greenmarket, divided into two 7 1/2-ounces pieces for this dinner, and one 4-ounce piece that would be part of an appetizer the next day, all three marinated for more than half an hour in a mixture of 3 baby French leeks from Mountain Sweet Berry Farm, a heaping teaspoon of pungent dried Sicilian oregano from Buon Italia, little more than a pinch of dried Itria-Sirissi chili (peperoncino di Sardegna intero) from Buon Italia, and a couple tablespoons of olive oil, after which the steaks were drained, covered on both sides with a coating of homemade dried breadcrumbs (to help retain the moisture, and keep them from drying out), pan-grilled over medium-high heat for 3 or 4 minutes on each side, or until barely cooked all of the way through, removed, the 2 larger pieces arranged on the plates and the smaller, 4-ounce section placed in a vintage pyrex container, covered with olive oil, and refrigerated, while the 2 sections to be served that night were seasoned with a a small amount of Phil Karlin’s P.E. & D.D. Seafood Long Island Sound sea salt, a good amount of juice from an organic California lemon from Chelsea’s Whole Foods Market squeezed on top before being drizzled with olive oil, garnished with micro chervil from Two Guys from Woodbridge

• two medium (purple skin, white flesh) purple viking potatoes from Lucky Dog Organic Farm, scrubbed, boiled unpeeled in a good amount of generously-salted water until barely cooked through, drained, halved, dried in the still-warm large vintage Corning Pyrex Flameware blue-glass pot in which they had cooked, tossed with a little Whole Foods Market house Portuguese olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper and sprinkled with chopped fresh thyme leaves fromKeith’s Farm

• nearly a pound of slightly mixed tones of large very ripe washed and dried cherry tomatoes from Norwich Meadows Farm, punctured with a skewer and placed inside a small square antique rolled-edge tin oven pan with 2 or 3 tablespoons of Whole Foods house Portuguese olive oil and 4 small unpeeled ‘Chesnok Red’ garlic cloves from Alewife Farm, slow-roasted at 325-350º for about 30 minutes [they can be served at room temperature, but last night they were ready just as everything else was]
• the wine was an Italian (Veneto) white, Lugana “Cromalgo”, Corte Sermana 2017, from Astor Wines
• the music was our second voyage with a 2-CD album that presents a gorgeous, epic, cultural, geographic, and historical tour of the 14th-century Muslim world, and also some of the lands beyond, from the album, ‘Ibn Battuta: Le Voyageur d l’Islam (The Traveler of Islam), 1304-1377’, produced by Jordi Saval and Hespèrion XXI