That bacon was as good as it looks. As was everything else, including the the eggs, which, for the first time in longer than I can remember, were not from a farmer at the Union Square Greenmarket, and [probably] not really local. While there on Saturday, I didn’t buy eggs, thinking I had 11 left in the refrigerator. Later I discovered there were only 5, so I headed down the block to Whole Foods and looked for something that might be equivalent to what we’re used to.

I don’t know how long they had been away from the hen, but the 6 large ‘Vital Farms Pasture Raised Organic Eggs‘, described as ‘From Family Farms Across America’ (thus my question about how local they could be) were very good! Maybe it also had something to do with the fact that the package was able to certify ‘min 108 sq ft’ for the ‘pasture raised standard / outdoor space per bird’ (hell, most folks’ offices aren’t that large).

• the breakfast/lunch included 6 large eggs from Vital Farms (see above); thick bacon slices/pieces from a package of ‘ends’ I had cut by hand at home, from Millport Dairy; finely-chopped portions of one tiny yellow and one tiny red hot pepper, both from Eckerton Hill Farm, which had been swimming in olive oil inside a small cup overnight; 2 habanada peppers, chopped, from Norwich Meadows Farm; chopped lovage from Two Guys from Woodbridge; maldon salt and freshly-ground pepper; a mix of various chicories and tender greens the folks of Campo Rosso Farm had presented to guests at a farm dinner at Untitled, dressed with a Campania oil and white balsamic vinegar, maldon salt and freshly-ground pepper; an aromatic Middle-Eastern-style seasoning blend, ‘L’eKama‘; and toast from slices of Orwasher’s Bakery ‘Pain Rustica Umbria’ (unbleached unbromated wheat flour, cabernet grape starter, water, malt, salt, yeast) from Murray’s Cheese Shop, made on my ‘Camp-A-Toaster’ [see this post]
• the music was Hans Zender’s Logos-fragmente (Canto Ix), which happens to include early Christian texts, so accounting for its being chosen on a Sunday morning (it’s our weekly conceit)

Yoeman service.

Because of our schedules lately, all of the meals I’ve recently prepared have had to be somewhat improvised, even a bit sketchy, and often involved leftovers, and what I call ‘hangers on’ (ingredients that have been around for a while and which I judge really should make it into a meal soon).

This time there was a fresh, unplanned guest: the beautiful contents of a ‘goody bag’ from our previous night’s outing at Untitled, the restaurant that’s a part of the new Whitney Museum.  The farmers around whose produce last night’s dinner was built, Chris Field and Jessi Okamoto, gave each of the dinner guests a selection of chicories and other greens from their vast lands (8 acres in eastern Pennsylvania) as each of us was leaving. We got 2 of them, so we will all be seeing some of their work on this site for a little while.

These meals at home have all been yeoman service, and are appreciated, but I’m actually getting physically and emotionally anxious after being absent so long from my other safe place, the Union Square Greenmarket, and from the pleasures of real cooking.

I’ll be visiting both tomorrow.

• two ounces of La Quercia Lomo, in thin slices (this cured pork tenderloin turns out to be more than just a Spanish thing, viz. lonza di maiale stagionata) from Whole Foods, drizzled with a very small amount of a very good olive oil, Campania D.O.P. Penisola Sorrentina ‘Syrenum’
• served with a colorful mixture of various chicories and tender greens, a gift from the people of Campo Rosso Farm, dressed with Maldon salt, freshly ground pepper, the Campania olive oil, and a small drizzle of white balsamic vinegar
• slices of Orwasher’s ‘Righteous Corn Rye’ boule ((here the word, ‘corn’ derived from ‘korn’, means grains or kernels, and it has usually meant rye grain in Jewish Eastern Europe), from Chelsea’s Down to Earth Farmers Market

The main course really was a straight leftover, and needed no updating; the pasta and its sauce having retained the sturdiness and rich savoriness that had not asked for anything extra a few nights before.

• leftover Sfoglini chestnut fusilli and its sauce, of red onion from Stokes Farm, rosemary branches from Stokes Farm, red cabbage from Tamarack Hollow Farm, a little balsamic vinegar, and a heatless Habanada pepper form Norwich Meadows Farm (I forgot to serve it with the freshly-grated Parmigiano Reggiano Vacche Rosse from Buon Italia I had sprinkled on top the first time around

There was cheese.

• 3 Consider Bardwell Farm selections, ‘Manchester’, a medium-hard goat cheese‘, Experience’, a pasteurized, somewhat soft cow cheese, and ‘Pawlet’, a medium-hard cow cheese, served with toasts made from an Orwasher’s multigrain, seeded baguette

 

• the wine throughout was an Italian (Marche) white, Saladini Pilastri Falerio 2015, from Phillippe Wines
• the music throughout was Puccini’s ‘Turandot’, a performance of Francesco Molinari-Pradelli conducting the Rome Opera House Orchestra and Rome Opera House Chorus, with  Birgit Nilsson, Franco Corelli, Ida Farina, Renata Scotto, and others

Sicily.

It was a Sicilian meal, well, creatively Sicilian. Calamari are definitely a Sicilian thing, and the wine was Sicilian. Lots of herbs familiar in Sicilian cooking showed up, like oregano (here from the Madonie Mountains, Sicily); basil (the Hudson Highlands, in New York); and there’s no dispute about the importance of anything fennel in Sicily, here fennel flowers (the Catskill Mountains, New York); there was olive oil of course (not from Sicily, but at least from southern Italy, Puglia; there was pepperoncino (the plains of Turri, Sardinia, the next island north of Sicily), and there was garlic (New York again); lemon was important (here the California Central Valley?); and there were also tomatoes (very Sicilian – via Spain – even if these came from the area in New Jersey the Delaware culture called, Tuphanne [cold water], today’s Old Tappan); there was one large zucchini, or at least a relative of the zucchini (this one grown in the Green Mountains of Vermont); finally, the northern Italian radiccchio of which there are some traces in Sicily, at least these days (had that not been the case, this little Sicily conceit would have been a deceit; the radicchio I used came from the our own north, that same farm in those same Green Mountains).

As for the dessert, peaches are Italian, although the 2 we had were from the Marlboro Mountains in New York (the farm is owned by an Italian-American family).

 

*Chicories are grown in Sicilian gardens, even though they appear to have been an invention, or re-invention of the north of Italy.

 

• a large enameled cast iron pan heated until quite hot, its cooking surface brushed with olive oil, and, while the oil was hot, about 13 ounces of rinsed and dried squid from Blue Moon Fish in the Union Square Greenmarket, bodies and tentacles, arranged very quickly in it, immediately sprinkled with some super-pungent dried Sicilian oregano from Buon Italia and part of a crushed dried Sicilian pepperoncino, also from Buon Italia, followed by drizzling a few tablespoons of juice from an organic lemon and some olive oil, the pan placed inside a pre-heated 400º oven and roasted for 4-5 minutes, removed, distributed onto 2 plates, and drizzled with the cooking juices, pieces of lemon served on the side

piccolo squash in the market; trifolati minutes before removed from the heat

 

• a luscious, re-imagined classic summer-squash-and-tomato trifolati made by sautéing chopped pieces of an egg-shape piccolo summer squash (or ‘round green squash’) from Tamarack Hollow Farm with 2 sliced garlic cloves from Alewife Farm inside a large enameled cast iron pan, until the squash began to brown, followed by some of ‘the best cherry tomatoes‘, from Stokes Farm, along with salt and pepper, stirred well and cooked for 5 minutes, during which time pieces cut or torn from the core of a head of radicchio from Tamarack Hollow Farm were gradually added, the thicker parts first, the pan removed from the heat and some basil from Sycamore Farm, torn, added, the vegetables drizzled with olive oil, covered, and allowed to sit for 10 minutes to half of an hour or so [the recipe appears in “Italian Too Easy“], served on the plates sprinkled with fragrant fennel blossoms from Mountain Sweeet Berry Farm
• the wine was an Italian (Sicily) white, Grillo, Ca’ Lustra di Zanovello, from Astor Wines & Spirits
• the music was Antonio Vivaldi’s 1728 opera, ‘L’Atenaide’, in a brilliant performance by Modo Antiquo, directed by Federico Maria Sardelli