• Roberto’s grissini
• pan-grilled young goat loin chops (purchased from Uphill Farm, in Clinton Corners, New York, at the Union Square Greenmarket) which had been marinated an hour or so in a tempranillo wine, with chopped garlic, rosemary, bay leaf and peppercorns, and finished with drops of lemon, oil and chopped parsley; accompanied by oven-roasted potato chips (very-thin-sliced Keuka Gold, from Ulster County’s Healthway Farms, at the Union Square Greenmarket – the image above indicates I arrived late in the day);   and thin spears of California asparagus from Garden of Eden, baked at 450 degrees in one layer, with a sprinkling of oil and some salt and pepper, for 8-10 minutes, as suggested at least several years ago in a food column in Newsday by Erica Marcus (she’s one of my favorite things about the paper)
• dried Turkish figs
• wine:  red, from Roussillon,  Le Vignes de Bila-Haut, Côtes du Roussillon Villages 2008, M. Chapoutier, from K & D wines

I had originally planned a slightly more extensive meal for New Year’s Day, one which would have begun with a terrific-looking and sounding terrine of game, pink peppercorns and ginger.  I had purchased it at the Dickson’s Farmstand Meats in Chelsea Market the same afternoon I picked up their rolled lamb belly, which was also the day I spotted the chartreuse holiday lights across the street from the Market.

As it happened, and with some irony, once I was back home I became engaged in writing the previous dinner post and wasn’t watching the clock.   I remembered to put the miniature roast into a medium oven, but before I knew it I realized there was only enough time to prepare the vegetables which were to accompany it.  We wouldn’t be sitting down to a first course.  We’ll have the terrine tonight instead.

With the exception of the Auslese and the espresso, last night’s meal was entirely French-inspired;   in fact I confess I was gently guided by Julia Child and her collaborators.

• roasted boned and rolled lamb belly which had been painted hours before with a mix of dijon mustard, soy sauce, mashed garlic, ground cardamom and oil;   garnished with torn dandelion leaves originally intended to lie with the terrine; accompanied by Pommes de terre sautées au beurre, or potatoes sauteed in butter;  and Choux de Bruxelles étuvés au beurre, or Brussels sprouts braised in butter [the small white potatoes from Garden of Eden; the sprouts from Marlow & Daughters]*

• wine:  Bordeaux, Chateau Maison Neuve 2005 Montagne Saint-Emilon Michel Coudroy, one of the bottles included in a Sherry-Lehman Bordeaux wine sampler

• dessert wine:  Auslese, Stein Bremmer Calmot Riesling Auslese 2002, the last of a bottle opened last night, December 31st, a generous gift from a friend;  before biting into some extraordinary:

• Marrons Glacés, from Buon Italia in Chelsea Market

• espresso cafe

* although the image shown above is actually of an earlier purchase (December 16) from Van Houten Farms at the Union Square Greenmarket

Alvin Langdon Coburn The Octopus 1912

• Sicilian oil-cured olives and Roberto’s grissini
• Italian-packaged Carpaccio de Piovra (pressed and thinly-sliced octopus) purchased packaged from The Lobster Place in Chelsea Market, on a Salmoriglio-type sauce of salt, lemon juice, dijon mustard, pepper, balsamic vinegar and oil, some of the sauce sprinkled on a mixture of radicchio and dandelion leaves;  accompanied by slices of Sullivan Street Bakery Ciabatta from Garden of Eden
• Bucatini all’Amatriciana, using smoked pork cheek from Marlow & Daughters, the pasta also purchased, loose from a bucket, at that excellent Williamsburg shop
• wine:  Sicilian Bombino Bianco, Marese 2008 Rivera Castel del Monte Rivera DOC from Vino
• Sweet Sam’s Bronx pound cake from Garden of Eden, topped with a dollop of Ronnybrook Farm Dairy ginger creme brulee ice cream
• wine:  Stein Bremmer Calmot Riesling Auslese 2002, a generous gift from a friend

[image from the Metropolitan Museum]

Something in the way of a palate cleanser, and kitchen-pressure release valve as well:  Tonight, after a couple of days of feasting, it was back to basics, as we enjoyed an extremely simple, southern Italian meal, one with whose honest outlines we’re both very familiar.  In an odd exception from meals we’ve enjoyed over the past six to eight months, this time absolutely nothing came from the Union Square Greenmarket.

I’d already cooked the pasta when it first occurred to me to post about the meal, so in the accompanying image the spaghetti is instead represented by the beautiful label on the front of its box.

• sliced California-made Sopressata Columbus from Murray’s Cheese, with arugula dressed in oil and lemon, accompanied by an Elio’s Bakery Portuguese Saloio roll
• spaghetti aglio-olio peperoncino (here without anchovies), using Cav. Giuseppe Cocco pasta from Abruzzo
• wedges of “sweet lemon“, a serendipitous discovery at Garden of Eden
• wine:  Sannio Falanghina 2005 Mastroberardino from 67wine

I had originally intended to finish with a quince purée the small rack of venison I had gotten from Ottomanelli this week, but I had been misinformed about the availability of quince this late in December.   Learning the truth only the day before yesterday I quickly decided to use pears, one of the alternatives suggested by the recipe (in “D’Artagnan’s Glorious Game Cookbook“).

I had begun marinating the meat the day before that, in olive oil and crushed black pepper, along with Greenmarket rosemary, sage, and bay leaves (yes, I bought a bay branch at the greenmarket!).

Yesterday, just before searing the rack and putting it in the oven for 20 minutes, I made the sauce, chopping up firm Bartlett and Bouree Bosc pears and cooking them until tender with carmelized sugar and a combination of good Spanish red wine vinegar and stock which had been greatly reduced.  The pear sauce was then puréed and kept warm.  When the ribs were finished I separated them and served each portion on top of a helping of the purée, with a good portion of concentrated sauce infused with demi-glace spooned onto the meat itself and flowing onto the fruit.

The potatoes and the kale were both brought home from the Greenmarket in recent days.  I found the kale in fact in the farmer’s by-then-almost-emptied wooden box, still frosted with the snow, now slightly crispy, from last week’s storm.

We had been listening to Bach’s Christmas Oratorio for much of the afternoon, but, not wanting to carry the traditional  holiday playlist too far, just as we sat down to dinner we started listening to Bernstein’s “Candide“.

So for now, in this small place, in this best of all possible, possible, possible worlds: 

• smoked eel from the Greenmarket (Blue Moon Fish, Mattituck, Long Island) served on a plate with lemon wedges and a salad of arugula, endive, chopped Sicilian capers, chopped shallots, horseradish, crème fraiche, lemon and olive oil; accompanied by slices of Kara’s flax bread from Garden of Eden
• rack of California venison on pear purée, sauced with a sweet and sour demi-glace-infused concentrate; accompanied by rosemary-roasted French Fingerling potatoes;  and Winterbor kale (”really juicy after frosts”) from Keith’s Farm in Westtown, New York
• thin slice of pound cake with a scoop of Ronnybrook vanilla ice cream, sprinkled with chopped candied grapefruit from Garden of Eden
• wines:  wine:  Ferrari-Carano Fumé Blanc 2008 with the first course, and Ridge York Creek California Zinfandel 2008, and Bogle Vinyards Old Vine Zinfandel 2007, both from Phillipe Wine

Both yesterday’s lunch and this morning’s breakfast continued the holiday, or at least, winter, theme.   In the afternoon on December 25 I roasted some locally-grown Greenmarket chestnuts in a perforated pan on the top of our 1931 Magic Chef. This morning I spread some truly fantastic pumpkin preserves from Marlow & Daughters on some more of the flax bread, buttered this time.

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.

• Ronnybrook vanilla ice cream dribbled with Tiroler Heidelbeer Sirup (Heidelbeeren are the German equivalent of blueberries)

• wine throughout both courses:  Kremser Weinzierl Gruner Veltliner 2008 (very inexpensive, and a generous full liter) from Phillipe Wine

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.

• four tiny (2.5 oz. each) pan-grilled kid goat chops from Patches of Star Dairy; accompanied by oven-roasted Japanese sweet potatoes from Lani’s Farm; and sauteed beet greens from the Queens County Farm Museum (meat and vegetables all from the Union Square Greenmarket)
• Bleu d’Auvergne from Bobolink Dairy at the Greenmarket, and Tome Corse Brebis from Citarella in the West Village
• wine:  Le Couvent de Chateau Peyros 1995 Madiran (Corbère-Abères), from Wine Messenger

(probably not your mother’s butcher:  a detail of the meat case at Marlow & Daughters)

Marlow & Daughters

The post which appears just before this one describes a dinner which, although it did not include meats from the Williamsburg butcher shop Marlow & Daughters, was almost a natural segue from the three meals which immediately preceded it, which did.  The connection is their components, which were importantly either blood or liver (discouraging all but the heartiest meat eating readers), specifically the blood sausage in the Huevos Flamencos and the poached links of lamb liver sausage which dominated the meal the previous night.

It was only a coincidence that we had also enjoyed lunches with two different kinds of delicious liverwurst sandwiches on Monday and Tuesday (thanks again to the Union Square Greenmarket and the people at Flying Pigs Farm), but it appears that in those four days we were deep inside territory many might consider (excuse the pun) too gutsy for their taste.

The lamb liver sausage was the third in a series of dinners inspired by our visit to Marlow & Daughters on Sunday after our afternoon visiting Williamsburg galleries.  We’ve long been fans of the restaurants Diner and Marlow & Sons, which share a connection with each other and with Tom Mylan, their former in-house butcher.  Now Mylan is a food blogger, and has his own Broadway meat shop, for which he purchases only local, pasture-raised whole animals and then butchers them on-site.   The meat can often be cut to order, and there’s a generous charcuterie selection.

We had been reading exciting things about his independent venture and had been impressed with Mylan’s appearance on NPR’s “All things considered” last spring, but hadn’t actually visited the site until now.

On Sunday we brought home two beautiful, thick, sirloin steaks.   They looked like giant tournedos to me, but still somehow managed to tip the scales at only about 6 ounces each.  Perfect.    It was almost closing time when we arrived, but when the butcher I spoke to saw how disappointed I was that there was only one steak left in the counter, he told us that if we could wait a few minutes he’d cut two in any size we wanted from a large slab of dry-aged beef he had in the cooler.  Wow.  I was impressed.

It took me all the way back to the little full-service Italian grocery store down the street from the house where I grew up, in pre-breakdown Detroit:  I was probably thirteen or fourteen, and my first (after-school) job was as a stock boy and bag packer at “Nino’s Market” (it was probably only the size of our Manhattan apartment), and I clearly remember that, after the manager, who was the proud and very hot young son of the owner, the butcher was treated like a God!

I’ve never been afraid of meat since.

We also bought half a pound of beautiful house-cured guanciale, since it seemed about time for Pasta alla Gricia once again.  We never tire of that dish, which ideally includes properly-cured pork jowl, but a number of different pasta choices (we usually use a penne).  We first enjoyed it in 1996, in the form of Spaghetti alla Gricia, while sitting at a table on the street outside the Piccola Trattoria da Lucia, in Rome’s Trastevere (Chiuso il lunedì).    We went back to the Vicolo del Mattonato two days later, and at least once again the next time we were in Rome one year later (the founder’s son, Renato Bizzarri, who succeeded his mother in running the restaurant, recognized us as soon as we sat down).

Back at Marlow & Daughters, I looked around for lamb, and was sorry to hear from another butcher that the shop was altogether out of it.  Then he told me that he did have some lamb liver sausage in the back and wondered if it might interest us.   He was asking the right guys:  we were both game, and of course the medium-dark, purply sausage itself looked and smelled like game.  I knew I already had the wintry vegetables which would complement it.  We asked him to wrap up two links (11 or 12 ounces total).

The small shop also has some great cheeses, a small selection of pickles and preserves, milk, some fresh vegetables and fruit, and a carefully-selected assortment of dry food products.  Heaven.

This is a more complete description of our three Marlow & Daughters meals, whose vegetable ingredients (as well as the ice cream) were all gathered from the Union Square Greenmarket:

dinner, December 8, 2009

• pumpkin-based potage, which included a rich duck stock, red onion and fresh cider
• pan-sauteed sirloin steaks, finished with olive oil and lemon; accompanied by red French fingerling potatoes from Paffenroth Gardens roasted with fresh rosemary;  and gently-sauteed upland cress, also from Paffenroth Gardens
• wine:  Ercavio Tempranillo Roble Castilla 2007, from K&D Wine and Spirits

dinner, December 9, 2009

• olives and grissini
• Pasta alla Gricia (in this case, Rao’s penne rigate, with a sauce of guanciale, pecorino and lots of ground pepper)
• wine:  Sannio Falanghina 2005 Mastroberardino, from 67wine

dinner, December 10, 2009

• rich Muscovy duck soup (a lagniappe from our Thanksgiving dinner), served with thin slices of “Flax Seed Armadillo” bread from Bobolink Dairy
• poached lamb liver sausage links, served with whole-grain Dijon mustard;  accompanied by oven fries roasted together with garlic and thyme and finished with parsley; and a blanched and sauteed red mustard greens (sort-of-frisée)  from Lani’s Farm
• Ginger Crème Brulee ice cream from Ronnybrook Farm Dairy
• wine: Austrian Zweigelt, Weingut Hofer Zweigelt 2008, from Appellation Wines

[image at the top from Rotating Corpse]

• Huevos Flamencos, a Spanish dish of chorizo, morcilla (chorizo from Chelsea Garden of Eden, morcilla from Despaña), onion, red and green peppers, garlic, tomato sauce, Pimentón de la Vera – dulce, dry sherry, and eggs, sprinkled with sauteed bread crumbs and baked in cazuelas
• wine: Alaia – Dehesa de Rubiales 2006 Castilla Y Leon from Chelsea Wine Vault, the gift of a friend visiting from Buenos Aires
  

Many weeks back some friends of ours in Brooklyn had invited a dozen people to share Thanksgiving with them.  We were very happy to be included, but our hosts’ plans had to be canceled only days before the event because of a death in the family.  Our fallback was to prepare a dinner at home.  Unable to find guests at such short notice who were not already committed elsewhere, we had to re-think our favorite harvest féte as a much smaller affair than we would have preferred.

I would probably have eschewed turkey even if we had guests, but since if seemed we were going to be only two at dinner, I tried to think of an alternative which might be as appropriate as the archetypal American turkey but taste even better.   I picked out a small Muscovy Duck, or Canard de Barbarie [original to South and Central America] at Ottomanelli’s on Monday.  Today, Thursday, with a few appropriate “trimmings”, it did its special magic, introducing a hint of “the wild” into a very domestic holiday.

In the end the main course at least turned out to be more French than American.   But, upholding one of the traditions of the day, we did manage to have some leftovers, although the vegetables were not among them.

• a potage assembled from pumpkin, apple cider and red onion, served dribbled with cider syrup
• wine:  Boyer Brut Blanc de Blancs from Sherry-Lehmann [although Eleonora Riesling Halbtrocken, from our stock of sparkling Mosels, by Christoph von Nell would probably have been better with the earthy sweetness of this dish]
• Muscovy duck [canard de Barbarie] roasted on a bed of cut-up carrots, celery and onion, with a pan sauce made from the reduced cooking juices;  accompanied by turnips from Healthway Farms in the Union Square Greenmarker, braised in butter [navets à l'étuvée] and finished with drops of lemon and chopped parsley;  and sauteed yellow-stem chard [bette à carde] from Lani’s Farm, also in the Greenmarket, finished with oil and lemon
• wine:  a very nice Pomerol, Chateau Vray Croix de Gay [awesome name!] 2006, a terrific bargain purchased on line from K&D Wines and Spirits, in a very good Bordeaux sale
• mince pie from Windy Maples Farm at the Union Square Greenmarket, served with a dollop of Ciao Bella vanilla gelato