It started with leftovers Saturday night.

I knew we would enjoy the lobster-filled mezzalune, but what we had was only enough for a primi. I thought about a vegetable gratin for the secondo, but having found myself inside Whole Foods Market to pick up some milk, I visited the case where the salmon is displayed and the vegetables were pushed aside.

Except for the delicious January kale from central New York (and the micro-Romanesco and green cauliflower I added to the pasta).

• 8 pieces of lobster-filled mezzaluna remaining from an earlier meal, heated in a little butter then tossed with sections of tiny heads of Romanesco and green cauliflower from Norwich Meadows Farm and sprinkled with some additional squashed pink peppercorn
• mini baguette from Whole Foods

The second course was all brand new.

• one wild Sockeye salmon fillet (larger than usual, 1.15 pounds) from Whole Foods, seasoned with salt and pepper, rubbed with a mixture of ground coriander seeds, ground cloves, ground cumin, and grated nutmeg, and fried over medium-high heat for a few minutes on each side in an enameled, cast iron pan, finished with a squeeze of sweet lemon from Fantastic Gardens of Long Island, a drizzle of olive oil, and a sprinkling of micro sorrel from Two Guys from Woodbridge [note: this time, more or less unaccountably, I cooked the salmon on the skin side first, which may have had the effect of weakening the effect of the wonderful seasoning]
• a bouquet of delicious flat-leaf Winterbor kale from Norwich Meadows Farm, sautéed in olive oil in which 2 medium cloves of garlic, halved, from Lucky Dog Organic Farm had first been allowed to sweat
• mini baguette from Whole Foods

• the wine throughout was a California (Napa) white, Sin Fronteras Chardonnay Napa 2015, from Naked Wines
• the music, for much of the meal, was Alfred Schnittke, Symphony No. 7, Lü Jia conducting the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra

Red.

Red pork, red lobster, red/pink ‘peppercorns’:  It wasn’t a plan, but after the fact the red tones in this simple meal seemed right [Left] for the turn of a year in anxious times, even if the pleasures of the celebratory meal itself were nothing of the sort.

• red pepper taralli

• four ounces of thinly-sliced prosciutto Friulano Levoni from Eataly, served on a plate with a little Campania olive oil (Lamparelli O.R.O. from Buon Italia
• pieces torn off an Eric Kayser ‘baguette monge’, from the bakery/store near the Flatiron Building (still very warm when purchased at 5 that afternoon)

• lobster-filled mezzaluna (about 13 ounces) from the Rana store inside Chelsea Market, with a sauce of only a few tablespoons of rich Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter, melted, a few sprigs of chopped tarragon from Whole foods and some crushed pink peppercorns, the last a delicacy I had discovered in the original Dean & Deluca store on Prince Street in the early 80s
• more bread, to finish the sauce

• a toast, at midnight, with a split of Perrier-Jouët Grand Brut Champagne

• the wine throughout (until the midnight toast) was an Italian (Campania) white, Feudi di San Gregorio Falanghina 2014
•  the music throughout was WKCR streaming, the very last hours of its 9-day ‘Bach Festival 2016, then topped off after midnight with Bach’s delightful secular cantata-almost-opera,  ‘Geschwinde, ihr wirbelnden Winde’ (Swift, You Swirling Winds), the dramatization of a dispute between Phoebus and Pan about the relative merits of popular and ‘learned’ music