{"id":7100,"date":"2016-02-16T00:43:01","date_gmt":"2016-02-16T00:43:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=7100"},"modified":"2016-02-16T00:43:01","modified_gmt":"2016-02-16T00:43:01","slug":"octopus-micro-greens-steak-tiny-potatoes-kale-hearts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=7100","title":{"rendered":"octopus, micro greens; steak, tiny potatoes, kale; hearts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/octopus_carpaccio2.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-7104\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-7104\" src=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/octopus_carpaccio2.jpg\" alt=\"octopus_carpaccio2\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Even if it weren&#8217;t St. Valentine&#8217;s day, it\u00a0might have been possible\u00a0to spot a theme running through this meal. I don&#8217;t want to go into an analogy of its\u00a0physical elements, to protect\u00a0the squeamish, but the color red &#8211; and hearts shapes &#8211; were important parts of the conceit.<\/p>\n<p>The meal began with one of my favorite things, from the sea, another of those\u00a0treats which I suppose I could put together myself, with a great deal of labor, and perhaps an occasional success, but which I enjoy\u00a0prepared by\u00a0experts.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>octopus carpaccio (sliced, pressed octopus), less than 3 ounces altogether, from The Lobster Place, drizzled with a little juice from a\u00a0tiny lemon-lime grown locally by David of Fantastic Gardens of Long Island, and a little very good olive oil<\/li>\n<li>micro kale greens from Lucky Dog Organic Farm<\/li>\n<li>slices of a\u00a0small Bien Cuit baguette from Forager&#8217;s Market<\/li>\n<li>the wine was a really super Spanish (Pened\u00e8s) sparkling ros\u00e9 (it was Valentine&#8217;s Day!), <a href=\"http:\/\/www.castellroig.com\/en\/project\/cava-brut-rosat\/\">Castellroig Cava Brut Rosat<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/flatiron_steak_la_Ratte_kale.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-7102\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-7102\" src=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/flatiron_steak_la_Ratte_kale.jpg\" alt=\"flatiron_steak_la_Ratte_kale\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Avoiding\u00a0the subject of hearts for a moment, and\u00a0looking at this entr\u00e9e, I&#8217;m thinking I might have figured out why this is\u00a0called a\u00a0&#8216;flatiron steak&#8217; (a new, increasingly-prized, and quite singular shoulder cut of beef which is sliced\u00a0by the butcher into\u00a02 flat steaks, to remove the heavy connective tissue) , except that its companion was definitely not shaped like an antique iron.<\/p>\n<p>It seems that I&#8217;m not the only one to have speculated\u00a0about the name; others\u00a0have tried to track down the story,\u00a0including <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gourmetsleuth.com\/articles\/detail\/flat-iron-steak\">this sleuth<\/a>, but I think\u00a0with\u00a0less than full success.<\/p>\n<p>I chose the 2\u00a0steaks at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dicksonsfarmstand.com\/\">Dickson&#8217;s Farmstand Meats<\/a>, for their perfect size, and at the suggestion\u00a0of Philip, one of the shop&#8217;s\u00a0knowledgeable butchers. They were delicious, more tasty\u00a0than more familiar, and pricier cuts that are often preferred for their ability to melt in your mouth (not a feature that compels\u00a0me).<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>two flat iron steaks (totaling 14 ounces) from Dickson&#8217;s Farmstand, brought to room temperature, dried with paper towels, scattered with a little sea salt, pan-grilled for about 4 minutes on each side, a little more salt and freshly-ground telicherry pepper added to both sides after each had been cooked, removed to warm plates, drizzled with a little juice from another local tiny lemon-lime, sprinkled with chopped winter savory from Stokes Farm, and a little\u00a0olive oil<\/li>\n<li>about half a pound of tiny La Ratte potatoes (the size of small-ish olives) from Berried Treasures Farm, scrubbed, dried, tossed with olive oil, thyme sprigs from Forager&#8217;s, salt, and pepper, scattered on a seasoned, medium-size Pampered Chef oven pan in a 375\u00ba-400\u00ba oven for about 20 minutes, removed, arranged on the plates and tossed with chopped parsley from Eataly<\/li>\n<li>some beautiful\u00a0kale from Alewife Farm,\u00a0saut\u00e9ed in olive oil in which 3\u00a0split medium cloves of garlic from Keith\u2019s Farm had first been allowed to sweat for a few minutes and begun to brown, seasoned with salt, pepper, and a dash of olive oil<\/li>\n<li>the wine with the steak was a magnificent, middle-age Spanish (Rioja) red, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.riojalta.com\/wines\/vina-ardanza\">Vi\u00f1a Ardanza Reserva La Rioja DOC Alta S.A. 2005<\/a>\u00a0[that link is to the producer&#8217;s site discussing the 2007 vintage; we&#8217;ve had our 2005 for years, and Alta S.A.\u00a0may now\u00a0consider\u00a0it\u00a0extinct]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/pine_nut_and_hazelnut_cookie_gelato-1.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-7109\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-7109\" src=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/pine_nut_and_hazelnut_cookie_gelato-1.jpg\" alt=\"pine_nut_and_hazelnut_cookie_gelato\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not red, but it is in the shape of a heart, and its totally &#8216;nutty&#8217; (specifically, pine nuts and hazelnuts).<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>two crispy pine nut and hazelnut cookies from Foragers Market, served with a little <a href=\"https:\/\/ciaobellagelato.com\/madagascarvanilla\/\">Ciao Bella &#8216;Madagascar Vanilla&#8217; gelato<\/a> and some <a href=\"https:\/\/ciaobellagelato.com\/dark-cocoa\/\">&#8216;Dark Cocoa&#8217; sorbetto<\/a>, also from Ciao Bella<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the music before and then throughout a part of the meal was Mozart&#8217;s &#8216;The Rake Punished, or Don Giovanni&#8217;, Yannick N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin conducting the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, with Ildebrando D&#8217;Arcangelo, Luca Pisaroni,\u00a0Diana Damrau, Joyce DiDonato,\u00a0Rolando Villaz\u00f3n, Mojca Erdmann, and\u00a0Vocalensemble Rastatt<\/li>\n<li>when the opera\u00a0had finished, well before we had, I suggested one Valentine&#8217;s Day\u00a0tale be followed with another, the wonderful<em>\u00a0<\/em>Stravinsky-Auden-Kallman collaboration, &#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Rake%27s_Progress\"><em>The<\/em>\u00a0<\/a><em><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Rake%27s_Progress\">Rake&#8217;s Progress<\/a>&#8216;, <\/em>like the Mozart-Da Ponte work, a\u00a0<em>dramma giocoso<\/em>, or <em>opera\u00a0buffa<\/em>, in the composer&#8217;s mid-20th-century neo-classical\u00a0style, which brought it\u00a0even closer\u00a0to the neo-classical age of the eighteenth (and they both have sassy\u00a0upbeat epilogues!); we heard <a href=\"http:\/\/Bryn Terfel \u00b7 Ian Bostridge Anne Sofie von Otter Deborah York The Monteverdi Choir\">John Eliot Gardner&#8217;s production,\u00a0with the London Symphony Orchestra,\u00a0Bryn Terfel, Ian Bostridge,\u00a0Anne Sofie von Otter,\u00a0Deborah York, and\u00a0The Monteverdi Choir<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Even if it weren&#8217;t St. Valentine&#8217;s day, it\u00a0might have been possible\u00a0to spot a theme running through this meal. I don&#8217;t want to go into an analogy of its\u00a0physical elements, to protect\u00a0the squeamish, but the color red &#8211; and hearts shapes &#8211; were important parts of the conceit. The meal began with one of my favorite &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-7100","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\/7100","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=7100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}