Tag: Queens County Farm Museum

dinner, December 24, 2009

red_cabbage_Queens_County_Farm_Museum

Barry and I don’t really celebrate Christmas, or any other god-based holiday, but we can’t help cherishing some of the trappings of the ancient Christian feast days kept by our families while we were growing up.   Holiday meals are probably the most important survivors of his and my early conversions to irreligion, and those associated with December 24 and 25 are among those most worthy of our attentions.

So two nights ago I once again cleared off (six) two-foot high stacks of books from the top of the dining table in the large gallery, unfolded the top, pulled out the legs and set it for the fresh, light dinner described below.  It was designed to anticipate a slightly more ambitious, warmer and heavier spread the following day:

  • smoked trout which I had picked out at the Union Square Greenmarket just the day before (Max Creek Hatchery in East Meredith New York), arranged on the plate with endive leaves which cradled a shredded apple and horseradish sauce/salad, along with slices from a Portuguese Saloio roll (hand-formed, peasant bread) from Garden of Eden (baked by Elio’s Bakery, in Jersey City)
  • red cabbage salad:  two beautiful small heads of red (actually, pretty purple) cabbage from the Queens County Farm Museum stand at the Greenmarket, thinly-shredded and mixed with lingonberry preserves, walnut oil, sherry vinegar, roasted and roughly-chopped walnuts, served garnished with julienne strips of the same Greenmarket-purchased New York-native Newtown Pippin apple included in the previous course, along with slices of a round loaf of dark flax-seed bread from Garden of Eden (Kara Bakery in Brooklyn), fresh butter and Manchego and Roncal cheeses  (from Murray’s Cheese);  the recipe for the entree was one adapted from Kurt Gutenbrunner and printed in the Times December 9.

Max_Creek_Hatchery_trout_sign

of red food, and dinner, December 12, 2009

Japanese_sweet_potatoes_Lani

Is it just me, or are there for sure a lot of pink-to-red-to-purple foods around at this time of year?

Over the last several weeks I’ve recently seen, prepared and served at home, in addition to tuna, of course, the usual meat suspects (including the smoked or cured) and the red or purple berries and fruit now only a memory, red beets, red chard, red mustard and kale, the red stems of beet greens, radicchio, pink, red or purple radishes, red onions, purple tomatoes and red potatoes, red sweet potatoes [see the Japanese sweets above, from Lani’s Farm] red cabbage, purple cauliflower and purple broccoli, and even purple kohlrabi.   And then there was also the bounty of the season just past:  tomatoes (red and sometimes even purple) available much later this year than in others, purple lettuces, red or purple bell peppers, and both purple string beans and purple okra.

I only became consciously aware of the red thing going on after plating several meals this fall.  The color scheme of last night’s dinner was similar to many of them, although, as with most, I managed also to include at least some green.