The antipasto included the lamb that remained from an earlier meal, now at room temperature, more mellow and sweet than when it had just been cooked and still warm (for what it is worth, the little roast was too small to allow me to make neat thin slices, so it looks rather chopped up here).

• lamb, from a roast prepared the previous Sunday, here served at room temperature, sliced as thinly as I could manage, leaning on a simple salad of romaine lettuce from Shushan Hydroponic and small arugula leaves from Alewife Farm, the greens dressed with a good Umbrian olive oil, Luciana Cerbini Casa Gola from Buon Italia (which was also drizzled over the lamb), a white balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper, accompanied by slices of pane di comune from Sullivan Street Bakery

 

The primi was not followed by a secundi, but on its own it was certainly up to the challenge presented by the salad which preceded it.  It was a pretty sturdy chestnut pasta which was sauced with mushrooms and, in an homage to the lamb in the salad, a bit of the intense gravy that had been produced by its preparation earlier in the week.

• eight ounces of Sfoglini chestnut fusilli (organic semolina flour, chestnut flour, water) cooked until al dente, served with a mushroom sauce composed of chopped golden oyster mushrooms from Blue Oyster Cultivation, cooked until soft in a large tin-lined heavy copper pan with a little bit of rich ‘Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter‘, minced ’Picasso’ (very strong) shallots from Mountain Sweet Berry Farm and minced garlic from John D. Madura Farm and some chopped thyme from Stokes Farm added to the mushrooms and cooked until fragrant and soft, at which time another tablespoon or two of butter was added, and, once melted, a tablespoon of coarse stone-ground flour introduced and stirred to make something of a paste, before a third of a cup of white wine slowly poured into the pan while being slowly stirred with a rubber whisk, cooked until the mix thickens, chopped parsley from Eataly and chopped lovage from Windfall Farms stirred in, before adding a little more than a tablespoon of concentrated genuinely-spicy self-sauce (gravy) rendered from a lamb roast cooked days before, the whole mix seasoned with salt and pepper before the cooked pasta was turned into the pan and mixed with the sauce, the completed dish served in 2 bowls, with grated ‘Parmigiano Reggiano Bonat 3’ from Buon Italia sprinkled over the top, before adding some micro fennel greens from Alewife Farm

(fennel micro greens, the final touch)

 

• the wine for both courses was an Oregon (Willamette Valley) red, Spindrift Cellars Pinot Noir Willamette Valley 2013
• the music was Agostino Steffani’s ‘Niobe Regina Di Tebe’, in a performance by the Balthasar-Neumann Ensemble, conducted by Thomas Hengelbrock

It was my 80th birthday, and the dinner – including the wines – was as exceptional as the occasion.

I might say that in this latest appearance, our storybook ‘Magic Meal’ was actually upstaged by the first course, but I won’t, out of huge personal sentiment – and loyalty to both a great restaurant (Al Forno, in Providence) and a home kitchen that has seen a lot over the decades.

Still, the sturgeon was a tough act to follow. Some of it may have been the pure novelty, and the fact that the recipe,  in all its simplicity, was entirely mine, but it really was delicious. That I grew up in the midwest, mid-century, where I was surrounded by sturgeon legends, and that Barry comes from Arkansas, one of the homes of the pallid and shovelnose, had almost nothing to do with it.

• four ounces of sliced smoked American farmed sturgeon from Grace’s Marketplace placed on a bed of almost impossibly-thin slices of 2 small golden beets from Norwich Meadows Farm that had first been sprinkled with small amounts of wild fennel pollen from Buon Italia, a good Puglian olive oil (7Giorni), and Newman’s Own balsamic vinegar, topped with dollops of a Ronnybrook Farm crème fraîche mixed with lemon zest and chopped fresh thyme, garnished with some subtly peppery micro red mizuna from Two Guys from Woodbridge
• flat bread crisps (Firehook Baked Crackers with rosemary and sea salt)
• the wine, which we had opened before the meal began and with which we toasted my great age and many great years shared with Barry, was a French (Champagne) sparkling, François Billion, Grand Cru, Brut Millésime 2010, from Astor Wines

The magic part of the meal was Conchiglie al forno (last night it was actually Lumaconi al forno, the pasta this time being Setaro’s ‘snails’, from BuonItalia), a rich pasta course with a very friendly history con noi that goes back 20 years. This pasta is sometimes described as lumache.

It combines a pound of a large Campania artisanal shell shape pasta with roughly half a pound of sliced mushrooms, half a pound of butter, 4 Italian cheeses, lots of double cream, one head of sliced radicchio, and a generous amount of fresh sage.

The recipe can be found on this site.

tip: any earthy mushroom would work (I have access to many, and this time I used chestnut mushrooms

tip: I used one large head of radicchio and it was more than enough

tip: the gorgonzola should not be a dolce

tip: you’ll need one very large bowl (or the emptied pasta pot)

• the wine was a very fine Italian (Tuscany) red, Barone Ricasoli, Chianti Gran Selezione 2015, from Bottlerocket

 

This was one of the tastiest, most successful winter entrées I’ve ever put together.

Even if Sunday wasn’t actually very wintry.

Earlier in the month, on the first cold day of the season, I had brought home a package of prized beef cubes, frozen, from some of my favorite people in the Union Square Greenmarket, the owners of Riverine Ranch, intending to make a hearty Sunday stew that, with luck, might be enjoyed while it snowed outside.

The weather didn’t cooperate: The temperature was in the 50’s all day, but I hadn’t anticipated that when, a couple days before the planned date, I defrosted it in the refrigerator.

I also didn’t know at the time what recipe I would use. I don’t cook stews often, so I didn’t have much of a file to work with. I considered a couple more conventional recipes I found on line before I focused on this one, mostly because it seemed just a little twisted (plus I had all the ingredients). There was also that seductive introduction from its author, Regina Schrambling.

It was really easy to prepare, there was no stress, its perfumes filled the apartment for hours. It was a huge success, the decision to include polenta making it a perfect meal. We finished it all (yup).

• the recipe I used for the stew is here; my only alterations were to substitute guanciale for the salt pork, and rendered duck fat for the butter; the fungi were chestnut mushrooms; I placed a buttered piece of parchment paper on top of the ingredients before they had begun cooking together (cut to copy the oval shape of the 11″ enameled cast iron Michael Lax Copco pot); and the garnish (of course there was a garnish – was micro clover, from Micro BK, a vendor from Brooklyn newly installed at the Union Square Greenmarket
• a lot of people are frightened by the idea of cooking polenta, which is a huge same, but long ago I found Mark Bittman’s approach, in, ‘Polenta Without Fear’,  pretty easy going: since it’s always so delicious, make sure you make more than enough
• the wine was a Tuscan (Montalcino) red, Brunello di Montalcino Caprili 2015, from Zachys
• the music was the 1656 opera, ‘L’Orontea’, by Pietro Antonio Cesti, Ivor Bolton conducting the Frankfurt Opera and Museum Orchestra, and the Monteverdi Continuo Ensemble