Fast food (the crab cakes; the rest was slow).

This may have been my favorite treatment to date for my favorite Greenmarket crab cakes.  It involved placing them on a bed of very ripe heirloom tomatoes and some Thai basil, and adding a ‘topping’ of a peppery melange of baby greens.  I decided on the green side entirely because the only suitable vegetables I had in the crisper were green bell peppers (the last of the bounty a friend recently shared with us from her upstate garden), and some very neat small leeks I had picked up from the Greenmarket the day before preparing this meal.

1. crab cakes from P.E. & D.D. Seafood, sautéed in a little olive oil for about 4 minutes on each side, arranged on a bed of roughly-chopped heirloom tomatoes (a friend’s dark red, from her garden in Garrison, New York, and one Berried Treasures orange), mixed with Thai basil (leaves and blossoms), salt, and pepper, each serving topped with a small amount of ‘Living Japanese Peppergrass’ (pak choi/red mustard/green mizuna/leaf broccoli) from Radicle Farm, then drizzled with a bit of good olive oil
2. leeks from Ryder Farm, split and pan-grilled, combined with strips of green bell peppers from a friend’s garden in Garrison, sautéed, celery from Whole Foods, also sautéed, some briefly-sautéed leek green stems, and garlic chive flowers
3. a simple cheese course with Consider Bardwell’s goat milk ‘Danby’ (made with a surprise end-of-season batch), which produced a great taste and a very long  finish, accompanied by thin toasts made from slices of one of Eataly’s ‘Integrale’ loaves
4. the wine was a remarkable sturdy Quebec rosé, Le Charlevoyou Rosé 2014, vinifié chez Maurice Dufour; I know it’s from a very limited production (we bought it à la maison, just outside Baie-Saint-Paul), and it’s not available in the U.S., but, if it were possible, I would buy a case of this wine today
5. the music was Mozart’s ‘Don Giovanni’, conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini, with Eberhardt Wächter, Elisabeth Schwarzkop, and Cesare Valletti, et al.