{"id":5217,"date":"2015-09-07T00:41:09","date_gmt":"2015-09-07T00:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=5217"},"modified":"2015-09-07T00:41:09","modified_gmt":"2015-09-07T00:41:09","slug":"speck-grilled-tuna-sauteed-okra-cheese-gelato","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=5217","title":{"rendered":"speck; grilled tuna, saut\u00e9ed okra; cheese; gelato"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/tuna_okra_cherry_tomatoes.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-5219\" src=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/tuna_okra_cherry_tomatoes.jpg\" alt=\"tuna_okra_cherry_tomatoes\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It was\u00a0to be four of us for\u00a0dinner. There would be the same\u00a0number of\u00a0courses, but only one of them required any real cooking, and very little cooking at that. \u00a0The kitchen therefore never had the chance to heat\u00a0up (although, since we ate in the dining room\/gallery, I suppose it wouldn&#8217;t have mattered\u00a0much\u00a0anyway). \u00a0Also, while normally I have difficulty\u00a0interacting with guests as I would like to while cooking,\u00a0I really knew my way around each of these four plates, so I was able to invite everyone into the kitchen area while I was still working on them. \u00a0Yay!<\/p>\n<p>I really\u00a0recommend\u00a0these &#8216;recipes&#8217;\u00a0to anyone who might have the same entertaining parameters.<\/p>\n<p>Also, the meal was delicious; the main course featured two of my favorite things, they were both incredibly fresh (probably caught and picked the day before), and they were prepared in just about the\u00a0simplest way possible.<\/p>\n<p>The tuna, which followed a serving of Speck and greens, was prepared using\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.strandbooks.com\/product\/italian-easy-recipes-from-the-river-cafe\">Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers<\/a>&#8216;s simple\u00a0recipe; the very basic treatment of the okra was a suggestion I had come across somewhere long ago; and the intentionally un-spicy cherry tomato salsa\u00a0was another simple treatment, my own invention.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>three\u00a0tuna steaks from P.E. &amp; D.D. Seafood (they totaled\u00a0about 28 ounces, to feed\u00a0four), small sections of each removed to make up a fourth serving, tops and bottoms of the steaks rubbed with a mixture of fennel seed and crushed dried peperoncino peppers which had been ground together, seasoned with salt, and pepper, then pan-grilled for only a minute or so on each side, and finished with a good squeeze of lemon and a drizzle of olive oil<\/li>\n<li>a combination of small green and purple okra (about a pound) from Ryder Farm,\u00a0saut\u00e9ed in olive oil with additional crushed dried pepperoncini\u00a0in an iron pan over a high flame, then seasoned with salt (the purple ends up more or less a darker green when cooked)<\/li>\n<li>really tiny red cherry tomatoes from Berried Treasures (Franca could not remember at the moment I asked her exactly what they were called), which I sliced most of the way through so they wouldn&#8217;t explode\u00a0when picked up with a fork, tossed with good olive oil, salt, pepper, Thai basil from a friend&#8217;s garden in Garrison, New York, and some garlic chive flowers from\u00a0Paffenroth Farms, then left to sit for about an hour before being served in bowls to the side of the dinner plates<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/speck_arugula_celery_rustica.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-5220\" src=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/speck_arugula_celery_rustica.jpg\" alt=\"speck_arugula_celery_rustica\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Speck has become\u00a0one of our favorite antipasti. \u00a0For some reason it always makes me feel it&#8217;s part of a\u00a0festive occasion, and this time it genuinely was, since we were sharing it with good friends, and they had thoughtfully brought along a bottle of an excellent Austrian sparkling wine (this is probably not the right time for me to bring up\u00a0the historical connection between the S\u00fcdtiroler <em>Speck<\/em> and the country in which the Gr\u00fcner Veltlinger<em> Sekt<\/em> was produced). \u00a0I served the salumi with a very good bread and a bit of arugula (as it turned out, too small of a bit, so I added some celery leaves I had on hand).<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>thinly-sliced Alto Adige Speck from Eataly, each piece rolled around a\u00a0fork&#8217;s tines and put on a plate where it was drizzled with some very good olive oil, and accompanied by arugula from Keith&#8217;s Farm which I had mixed with a smaller amount of roughly-chopped celery leaves from Whole Foods, the greens seasoned and dressed with the same good oil and drops of lemon<\/li>\n<li>the antipasto was accompanied by slices of a loaf of\u00a0&#8216;rustic classic&#8217; from Eataly<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>After the tuna, there were three regional cheeses (\u2018Manchester\u2019 and a special late-season &#8216;Danby&#8217;, both goat cheeses\u00a0from Consider Bardwell Farm; and\u00a0\u2018Brebis Blanche\u2019, a sheep cheese with a coating of ground mixed pepper, from 3-Corner Field Farm), served with thinly-sliced &#8216;Rustic Classic&#8217; from Eataly, toasted.<\/p>\n<p>The dessert was some of\u00a0Berried Treasures&#8217;s celebrated\u00a0strawberries (the breed\u00a0a mix of domestic and wild), topped with a\u00a0scoop\u00a0of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/ciaobellagelato.com\/madagascarvanilla\/\">Madagascar\u00a0Vanilla\u00a0Ciao Bello<\/a> gelato, with\u00a0a sauce composed of a few of the berries which had been macerated a bit with\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.capriflavors.com\/index.php?main_page=product_info&amp;cPath=1&amp;products_id=1593&amp;zenid=0fa0a1fdceefabc7f9e173668e79b855\">Toschi Orzata Orgeat<\/a> syrup spread over the ice cream and garnished with chopped hazelnuts.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the wine with the Speck was an Austrian sparkling white,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.winebow.com\/winery.php?id=204\">Szigeti Gr\u00fcner Veltliner Brut<\/a> from Gols, on the Neusiedler See, in\u00a0Burgenland<\/li>\n<li>the wine with the tuna was a New York Cabernet Franc ros\u00e9, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fingerlakeswine.info\/id\/schneider--bieler-rose-le.html\">Schneider &amp; Bieler Ros\u00e9 \u201cle breton&#8221; 2014<\/a>\u00a0from the Fingerlakes<\/li>\n<li>the name of the wine with the cheese course has faded from my memory<\/li>\n<li>The after-dinner drink was\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.varnelli.it\/en\">Varnelli L&#8217;Anice Secco Speciale Mistra Liqueur<\/a>, from the Marche.<\/li>\n<li>the music was our own conversation<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was\u00a0to be four of us for\u00a0dinner. There would be the same\u00a0number of\u00a0courses, but only one of them required any real cooking, and very little cooking at that. \u00a0The kitchen therefore never had the chance to heat\u00a0up (although, since we ate in the dining room\/gallery, I suppose it wouldn&#8217;t have mattered\u00a0much\u00a0anyway). \u00a0Also, while normally I &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5217","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\/5217","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}