{"id":17887,"date":"2018-07-06T00:47:08","date_gmt":"2018-07-06T00:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=17887"},"modified":"2018-07-06T00:47:08","modified_gmt":"2018-07-06T00:47:08","slug":"culotte-steak-shallot-blossom-tomatoes-dill-flowers-okra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=17887","title":{"rendered":"culotte steak, shallot blossom; tomatoes, dill flowers; okra"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-17889\" src=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/culotte-tomatoes_okra.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" \/><\/p>\n<p><i>&#8216;Heil sei dem Tag!&#8217;\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n<p>It was the Fourth of July. We had a nonpareil steak, ripe tomatoes, the first okra of summer, and a sturdy and particularly American red wine. While the opera was German, the music sings of liberty and justice, and the plot is particularly apposite in jailhouse America. For what it&#8217;s worth, in Beethoven&#8217;s scenario the girl rescues the boy, and there&#8217;s a happy ending.<\/p>\n<p>The meal was perfectly delicious and all else was perfect as well, except for the fact that we needed the air conditioner running, which meant that we didn&#8217;t even <em>hear<\/em>\u00a0the fireworks on the East River.<\/p>\n<p>Also, there were shallot blossoms! Spring really does belong to the alliums.\u00a0 &#8216;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-17900\" src=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/shallot-blossoms.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\" \/><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>one 14-ounce grass-fed, grain finished culotte steak (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gq.com\/story\/the-unconsidered-cut-3\">called \u2018culotte\u2019 here, \u2018coulotte\u2019 in France, \u2018picanha\u2019 in Brazil<\/a>) from Greg and Mike of Sun Fed Beef\/Maple Avenue Farms in the Union Square Greenmarket, brought to room temperature, halved crosswise (the cut is unevenly shaped, but I came out with two pieces weighing precisely 7 ounces each!) seasoned on all sides with sea salt and freshly-ground\u00a0black pepper, seared briefly on the top, or thick, fat-covered side inside an oval enameled heavy cast iron pan, the 2 long sides cooked for 3 or 4 minutes each, then the ends and the narrow bottom side seared, each very briefly, the steaks removed from the pan, perfectly medium-rare this time, thin slices from the stem of a flowering spring shallot from Keith&#8217;s Farm, along with most of its beautiful scissored blossoms, sprinkled on top, then drizzled with a Whole Foods Market house Portuguese olive oil and allowed to rest for about 4 minutes<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-17909\" src=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Alex_cherry_tomatoes.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\" \/><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>a large handful of ripe red grape tomatoes from Alex\u2019s New Jersey Tomato Farm, found at Chelsea\u2019s Down to Earth Farmers Market on 23rd Street (see the image above), and 4 equally ripe Backyard Farms Maine \u2018cocktail tomatoes\u2019 from Whole Foods Market, washed, halved, the larger tomatoes cut into fourths, heated inside a medium Pyrex glass pan in a little olive oil, sprinkled with salt and pepper, garnished with dill blossoms from Windfall Farms<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-17901\" src=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/okra_square-.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\" \/><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>a few handfuls of okra from Kernan Farms,\u00a0saut\u00e9ed over a high flame inside a very large seasoned cast iron pan in only a little olive oil and a good\u00a0part of one crushed dried dark\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/2017\/02\/28\/the-habanada-pepper-fresh-and-dried-two-ways\/\">habanada pepper<\/a>, seasoned with sea salt<\/li>\n<li>the wine was a zinfandel a Califronia (Lodi) red,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/us.nakedwines.com\/products\/karen-birmingham-reserve-zinfandel-2015\">Karen Birmingham Reserve Zinfandel Lodi 2015<\/a>, from\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/us.nakedwines.com\/full_site\">Naked Wines<\/a><\/li>\n<li>the music was Beethoven&#8217;s 1805-1814 opera, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fidelio\">&#8216;Fidelio&#8217;<\/a>, in a performance with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.deccaclassics.com\/us\/cat\/4782551\">Claudio Abbado leading the\u00a0Mahler Chamber Orchestra\/Lucerne Festival Orchestra and the Arnold Schoenberg Choir, with soloists\u00a0Nina Stemme, Rachel Harnisch, Jonas Kaufmann, Christoph Strehl, Peter Mattei, Falk Struckmann, and Christof Fischesser<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8216;Heil sei dem Tag!&#8217;\u00a0 It was the Fourth of July. We had a nonpareil steak, ripe tomatoes, the first okra of summer, and a sturdy and particularly American red wine. While the opera was German, the music sings of liberty and justice, and the plot is particularly apposite in jailhouse America. For what it&#8217;s worth, &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meals-at-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17887\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}