{"id":8609,"date":"2016-07-10T18:56:35","date_gmt":"2016-07-10T18:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=8609"},"modified":"2016-07-10T18:56:35","modified_gmt":"2016-07-10T18:56:35","slug":"heirloom-rucola-bass-oxalis-segretti-squash-milkweed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=8609","title":{"rendered":"heirloom, greens; bass, oxalis; agretti; squash, milkweed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-8614\" src=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/black_sea_bass_oxalis.jpg\" alt=\"black_sea_bass_oxalis\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Hyperbole. \u00a0Yes, this will sound like hyperbole, but, supported by the\u00a0fallibility\u00a0of memory, I mean it: This was <em>the best fish I have ever tasted<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Note: along with everything else it had going for it, there was just the right amount of crustiness to the bass when it\u00a0arrived on the plates.<\/p>\n<p>The meal began with what I had assumed would be a pretty ordinary mix of tomato and a bitter green, and in fact I had decided to add\u00a0it to the meal mostly because I had one special\u00a0yellow heirloom tomato that had been a little bruised on the way home from the Greenmarket the day before. It didn&#8217;t make sense to include it on the entr\u00e9e\u00a0plate with another yellow vegetable I was anxious to serve with the fish, so I called up some arugula and some spicy basil and made room for a\u00a0starter (the two red cherry tomatoes were an indulgence on the side of more color).\u00a0 That course\u00a0too turned out far more delicious\u00a0than I could have imagined.\u00a0The colors were great fun, but the taste was\u00a0pretty marvelous.<\/p>\n<p>In each case it was the quality of the ingredients that did it, but in the case of the bass, there was an extraordinary novelty this time, buds of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Asclepias_syriaca\">the common milkweed<\/a>. Beyond that, it was certainly also about the <em>very<\/em> simple Mark Bittman <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/04\/03\/magazine\/mag-03Eat-t.html\">classic saut\u00e9ed white fish fillet\u00a0recipe<\/a>, one with which I have become increasingly familiar and, I guess, judging from the results this time, somewhat proficient.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-8615\" src=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/tomato_arugula.jpg\" alt=\"tomato_arugula\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" \/><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>a handful of arugula from\u00a0from John D. Madura Farms and 2 leaves of radicchio from Hawthorne Valley Farm, both torn into fork-size pieces and arranged on 2\u00a0plates, topped with wedges of a single\u00a0Striped German heirloom tomato and halves of 4 \u00a0of \u2018The Best Cherry Tomatoes\u2019 from Stokes Farm, drizzled with\u00a0a fine Campania olive oil,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.frantoiogargiulo.com\/it\/shop\/olio-oliva-dop-sorrento\/olio-di-oliva-dop_penisola_sorrentina-_-2014-01-28-2014-01-28-detail.html\">D.O.P. Penisola Sorrentina &#8220;Syrenum&#8221;<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.maldonsalt.co.uk\/\">Maldon<\/a>\u00a0sea salt (our table salt and my\u00a0normal finishing salt), freshly-ground\u00a0Tellicherry pepper, and a white balsamic vinegar, sprinkled with chopped <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thai_basil\">Thai basil<\/a> from Norwich Meadows Farm<\/li>\n<li>slices of a rustic, 7-grain bread,\u00a0Grandaisy\u00a0\u2018Sette Grani\u2018<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>two 6-ounce sea bass fillets from Pura Vida Fisheries, dredged in seasoned coarse stone-ground flour which had been spread across a plate, then dipped in a mixture of one\u00a0egg from Millport Dairy Farm whipped with\u00a0a few tablespoons of chopped\u00a0parsley from Stokes Farm, saut\u00e9ed for a couple\u00a0minutes in a mixture of butter and olive oil, skin side down, inside a heavy long copper pan, then turned, saut\u00e9ed\u00a0for little more than another minute (until the fish was cooked through; the time will vary each time with the size of the fillets and the height of the flame), removed from the pan, the heat now turned off, sprinkled with what there was of the juices remaining there, into which I had first\u00a0scattered some <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Oxalis_montana\">oxalis aka &#8216;wood sorrel&#8217;<\/a>, stems removed, from Alewife Farm, followed by a squeeze of an\u00a0organic lemon from Whole Foods, the fillets\u00a0finally dressed with more (fresh) oxalis leaves<\/li>\n<li>two small yellow summer squash from Norwich Meadows Farm, tossed in olive oil, sea salt, and freshly-ground Tellicherry pepper, pan-grilled, removed, sprinkled with chopped <a href=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/2016\/07\/01\/scallops-milkweed-buds-tomato-garlic-wild-cress-salad\/\">milkweed buds<\/a> from <a href=\"http:\/\/downhomeacres.weebly.com\/\">Down Home Acres<\/a><\/li>\n<li>a small bunch of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jamieoliver.com\/news-and-features\/features\/agretti\/#izbskMpxXYk19t8y.97\">agretti<\/a>\u00a0(grows near\u00a0the sea, and is a great accompaniment for seafood)\u00a0from\u00a0Hawthorne Valley Farm, washed, trimmed, the larger portion of the stems removed, heated in olive oil and arranged on plates, where it was squeezed with lemon juice and given a drizzle of olive oil<\/li>\n<li>the wine was a California (Mendocino) white, <a href=\"http:\/\/store.elizabethspencerwines.com\/2015-sauvignon-blanc-mendocino-p477.aspx\">Elizabeth Spencer Sauvignon Blanc Mendocino 2015<\/a><\/li>\n<li>the music was a portion of, &#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.arkivmusic.com\/classical\/album.jsp?album_id=1671758\">The Music Of The Habsburg Empire<\/a>&#8216;, which is a 10-disc set\u00a0[well, it was a very big empire]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hyperbole. \u00a0Yes, this will sound like hyperbole, but, supported by the\u00a0fallibility\u00a0of memory, I mean it: This was the best fish I have ever tasted. Note: along with everything else it had going for it, there was just the right amount of crustiness to the bass when it\u00a0arrived on the plates. The meal began with what &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-8609","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\/8609","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=8609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8609\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}