Note to self:  The dinner and wine were both delicious, but the music was extraordinary, plus a huge surprise, since I had thought, as a huge fan of Hans Werner Henze for well over half a century, I was familiar with virtually all the recorded heterogeneous work of this awesome leftist, queer musical and theatrical genius.

 

The fisher folk were not at the Union Square Greenmarket on Monday (possibly because of the storm).  I had been looking forward to a seafood meal, so I was fortunate to have some frozen crab cakes which I keep on hand for such emergencies.  The introduction of some cured pork (prosciutto in this case) to the greens, making the meal a queer ‘surf  ‘n’ turf’, added an additional sturdiness on a stormy night.

• two crab cakes from P.E. & D.D. Seafood, (ingredients: crab, egg, flour, red & green peppers, garlic, salt, pepper, breadcrumbs, mayonnaise, milk, celery, parsley), heated in a heavy iron pan, four minutes to each side, then placed on a bed of greens (collard and some kale), chopped Applegate Naturals prosciutto from Whole Foods, sliced spring garlic from Norwich Meadows Farm, some juice of a lemon from Fantastic Gardens of Long Island, in a procedure mostly following the vegetable portion of Emma Ribiero’s recipe.
• ’18K Gold Nugget’ (actually, ‘Nicola’ in this batch) potatoes from Mountain Sweet Berry Farm, boiled in salted water, drained and steamed dry, rolled with a small amount of olive oil and freshly-ground black pepper and chopped winter savory from Whole Foods
• the wine was a South African white, De Wets Excelsior Chardonnay 2014
• the music was an magnificent performance of Hans Werner Henze’s incredible, ‘Il Vitalino Raddoppiato’  (exceptionally for us during a meal, we hardly said a word through the almost-half-hour duration of the piece)