{"id":5302,"date":"2015-09-12T22:03:18","date_gmt":"2015-09-12T22:03:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=5302"},"modified":"2015-09-12T22:03:18","modified_gmt":"2015-09-12T22:03:18","slug":"hake-amaranth-microgreens-grilled-eggplant-salad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=5302","title":{"rendered":"hake, amaranth microgreens; grilled eggplant; salad"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Note to self: \u00a0This was beyond any doubt, the most delicious hake I have ever eaten.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It was the chance assemblage\u00a0of some very fine\u00a0ingredients that made this terrific meal possible; that, and one very fine muse<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The hake was extraordinarily fresh, and although\u00a0I have prepared slightly different versions of this dish in the past, none of them had involved amaranth microgreens, whose flavor\u00a0seemed to have a special affinity with\u00a0the sage leaves and lemon which were a part of the basic recipe. \u00a0In fact, it was my first outing with\u00a0these beauties, which also provided a spectacular visual, both on the table\u00a0and\u00a0in the\u00a0image on this blog post.<\/p>\n

So, am I still in Italy?<\/p>\n

The Mario Batali eggplant<\/a> treatment brought me back to the boot, but the\u00a0small salad which shared the plate as a third element still\u00a0made it iffy. As with the hake, the grilled Japanese melanzane<\/em> recipe was an old favorite of mine, but these three small fruits\u00a0<\/em>were juicier than any I’d had before, and seemed to have more flavor as well.<\/p>\n

The single small orange heirloom tomato we shared was perfectly ripe, and was perfectly at home on\u00a0a small collection of baby lettuce.<\/p>\n

I just noticed that there are a lot of “baby”s and “small”s in my\u00a0discussion of this dinner. \u00a0I hope it doesn’t make the meal sound too precious, because it certainly was not.<\/p>\n

The plate\u00a0was also a subtle\u00a0rainbow of color; \u00a0the picture I’m using\u00a0shows so much of the area above the food\u00a0itself only because I wanted to\u00a0include a bit of the color of the wine\u00a0we enjoyed with it.<\/p>\n