{"id":2725,"date":"2014-11-30T02:39:53","date_gmt":"2014-11-30T02:39:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=2725"},"modified":"2014-11-30T02:39:53","modified_gmt":"2014-11-30T02:39:53","slug":"oysters-then-squab-sweet-potato-chutney-greens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=2725","title":{"rendered":"oysters; then squab, sweet potato, chutney, greens"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ninigret_pond_oysters\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We didn’t have turkey.<\/p>\n

On thursday, Thanksgiving, we were at home, just two of us, having\u00a0somehow forgotten to arrange the\u00a0small dinner party we would normally have enjoyed on that most social (and refreshingly secular) of holidays. \u00a0We had squab, but before the squab, a treat which I have to call even more special; \u00a0we shared\u00a0a first\u00a0course of oysters from Walrus and Carpenters, an oyster farm on the north shore of beautiful Ninigret Pond, which is almost at the very bottom of\u00a0Rhode Island’s South County, one of my favorite places.<\/p>\n

We opened\u00a0five dozen last New Year’s Eve, when\u00a0I didn’t have to do much in the way of preparation for the light meal which followed. \u00a0This week\u00a0I decided that the two dozen (actually 25) would\u00a0represent the better part of valor if I was going to\u00a0turn return to the kitchen to\u00a0prepare\u00a0a more ambitious meal afterwards. \u00a0Whatever reason,\u00a0I think the oysters were even more delicious this time than they had been last December, and they were superb then.<\/p>\n

We had picked them up from\u00a0Jules Opton-Himmel,\u00a0the young ecologist who created and farms\u00a0the beds, the night before, and they had been harvested the day before that. \u00a0The drop off site was\u00a0the roof of his\u00a0mother\u2019s loft building on Lower Broadway, where we shared beer and a few\u00a0oysters with\u00a0Jules, Joanna, mom, and other customers who had come out in the rain\u00a0to collect a\u00a0share of the November\u00a0harvest.<\/p>\n

We\u00a0plan\u00a0to order more in December, if possible, on each of the next\u00a0Manhattan dates<\/a>,\u00a0December 12, 23, and 31, and we highly recommend that any local oyster fans\u00a0who are\u00a0listening do the same. \u00a0They also show\u00a0dates<\/a> for pick-ups at Brooklyn Kitchen\u00a0on their site.<\/p>\n

The bivalves were\u00a0followed by roast squab from South Carolina dressed with their own sauce, cranberry chutney, sweet potato oven fries, and winter radish greens braised with a bit of garlic. \u00a0Dessert was\u00a0mince pie with goats milk vanilla ice cream on the side. \u00a0As always, everything but the oysters themselves, and the birds,\u00a0came\u00a0from local farmers selling in the Greenmarket in Union Square.<\/p>\n