“Minutina”, or “Erba Stella”, or “Bucks Horn”, take your pick.

I snapped this picture with my phone at the Bodhitree Farm stall at the Greenmarket last week, to remind myself to learn more about this very beautiful “herb”, and how it might best be used.  While I bought some equally gorgeous tatsoi that day, which I served as a side dish for Wienerschnitzel, I’m now anxious to snap up a bunch of Minutia, or Erba Stella, the very next chance I get.  Looking at this picture I totally understand the star reference in one of its names.  Oh, it’s also called ”Bucks Horn”, the name by which it was known here in the colonial period, for the slightly ragged or pointed edges of its leaves.

I was delighted to learn that it’s also very much an Italian thing, a cold weather salad green (and in fact a succulent) with a mild nutty flavour and slightly crunchy texture.   Best when it’s young, it can be used in salads, where it contributes its own virtues in a crowd (not least its leaf shape and texture).  I’m actually likely to use it more often wilted with a bit of olive oil (with or without garlic) as a side or garnish for a meat or fish entrée, or as a bed for fish, meat, cooked vegetables, or – perhaps an inspiration here – eggs.

For the gardeners out there, it seems it’s incredibly easy to grow, that new growth follows after harvesting, and that it’s pretty hardy to boot.

I recently seized what may have been my last chance to enjoy a seasonal rich meal like this (it would definitely have felt out of sync with the warmer weather surely now just around the corner).

While on one of my regular visits to the Union Square Greenmarket the other day I learned that the shepherds of 3-Corner Field Farm, who offer their wonderful meats and cheeses – and more – there most of the year round, would be away from the local scene for a while (it’s lambing season).  I had just bought two beautiful rainbow trout from Dave at Max Creek Fishery, so I was stopping by their stall only to pick up a round of their incredible Shushan Snow cheese.  When I learned this would be my last chance to buy anything from them for a while, I decided to take home some chops, and two small (10 ounce) shanks as well, both for freezing.

We had already enjoyed the delicious chops, incredibly quick and easy to prepare, but my favorite recipe for slow-cooked shanks seemed a delightful way to perfume the apartment with cooking odors on a Sunday evening when we weren’t going to be going anywhere.   I was encouraged by the thought that the very fresh, and very sweet baby collards I had once again picked up from Rogowsky Farm (also in the Greenmarket) the day before would be a perfect foil for the rich flavors of the meat and its (virtually inevitable) accompaniment, polenta.

My standby recipe is taken straight from the first of the terrific Gray and Rogers cookery tomes, ”Rogers Gray Italian Country Cook Book“;  this is my broad description of how I dealt with its details:

• I first dipped the shanks in flour and browned them in a heavy oval enameled cast iron pan.
• I removed the meat while preparing the remaining ingredients of the dish in the same pan, first sautéing two very-thinly-sliced red onions until they were soft and slightly brown, then adding a small handful of chopped fresh rosemary leaves and chopped garlic.
• I continued to cook the mix, but only briefly.
• Finally I added a quarter cup of balsamic vinegar and almost half of a cup of good red wine (Cabernet Franc, this time), and turned up the heat for a few minutes to reduce the liquid a bit.
• The lamb went back into the pan, and I covered everything with a sheet of wet parchment which I had cut to reproduce its shape.  I reduced the heat, covered the pan, and placed it in the oven to cook slowly for two and a quarter hours, basting occasionally, and adding more wine when the onion mixture looked dry.

I finished the coarsely-ground polenta (yes, with a pretty generous amount of butter) by seasoning it and mixing in some grated Parmesan cheese and chopped fresh marjoram.

I sauteéd the collards lightly in a pan in which I had briefly sweated two bruised garlic cloves.

The wine we accompanied it with was stunning, a Cannonau Di Sardegna D.O.C.  20008, the pairing Barry’s inspired choice.

the Northern Pike (Esox lucius)

Fillet of fresh, wild West Virginia Pike from The Lobster Place, cooked auf Badische Art (although modified a bit), that is, seasoned, floured, and quickly-sauteed, then placed in a moderate oven after being sprinkled with guanciale cubes which were replaced after a few minutes, in consecutive stages, by diced onion and dill sprigs and finally by dots of butter, the fish finished in a very hot oven until the skin became crispy; accompanied by boiled parsley potatoes (Norland Red) finished with butter;  and a small lightly-dressed salad of cress, along with one sliced red heirloom tomato, on a dish to the side.

The recipe was modified from that in “Culinaria Germany”.

The wine was Franken, Hans Wirsching Iphofer Kronsberg Silvaner trocken 2010 (in a Bocksbeutel)

[image from the Wikipedia entry for Northern Pike, where it was isolated from the coat of arms of the Lower Saxon town of Gimte; the copyright holder has released the work into the public domain]

My ancient copy of Mimi Sheraton’s The German Cookbook comes to the table again:  I had brought home two beautiful smoked pork chops (Kassler Rippchen) from John of  Lancaster County’s Millport Dairy stall at the Union Square Greenmarket two days before, and the contents of our larder at home pointed me to how I should serve them.  I already had a bag of sauerkraut, some great potatoes, a medium onion and one green-ish apple (all but the cabbage picked up on earlier trips to the Greenmarket), so the solution seemed obvious.  It would be Kassler Rippchen and sauerkraut.  The only question would be what wine to accompany it, and the Austrian light-to-medium red we had on hand was an excellent, if perhaps unusual choice.

• a covered, oven-baked casserole of Kassler Rippchen and sauerkraut, meaning two seared smoked pork chops from Lancaster County’s Millport Dairy reasting on top of layers of a mixture of lightly- sauteed chopped Gold Rush apple from Phillips Farm and chopped onion, half a pound of briefly-sauteed sauerkraut, and half a pound of small thickly-sliced (un-peeled) Bintje potatoes from Mountain Sweet Berry Farm, all moistened with a bit of good chicken stock and dry white wine, then placed in  a 375 degree oven for 45 minutes.
• wine:  Austrian, Rose Schuster Zweigelt Classic 2009 Burgenland from Astor Wines

An article in the New York Times last year described goat as the most widely consumed meat in the world, but I’ve seen any number of sources on line disputing that.  I think the explanation may be in the phrasing:  The world may consume more pounds of pork or beef or poultry, but goat is what is eaten by a lot of people who are only able to eat meat on rare occasions (goats are very economical, naturally free-range, famously mobile, and they give excellent milk).  So it may be true that more people around the world consume goat than any other meat.

In any event, you’d never suspect goat had any importance in the world’s diet if you started searching for recipes, as I have, especially recipes treating it as anything but stew meat.  In spite of this handicap, I’ve actually been cooking goat for a year or two (see chops entries here and here).  At first I was pretty much on my own, unable to find much information even on the internet.

But I was determined to check out cabrito, or kid, for myself (ourselves), and at least try preparing simple goat chops or racks.   Yet while I was getting a bit of advice, and encouragement, from purveyors in the Greenmarket who specialized in milk products, I was afraid I was going to screw up and dishonor this wonderful animal.  Goat is very forgiving however, and once I realized I was able to pretty much follow the approaches I use to cook lamb, I was home free.  Goat and sheep are relatives, after all, as both belong to “the goat-antelope subfamily Caprinae.”

I recently picked up a copy of a new book called “Goat:  Meat, Milk, Cheese,” and I expect to be consulting it a lot, but even Weinstein and Scarbrough didn’t help me out with my latest adventure in goat cookery:  No mention of spare ribs.

Neither it nor anything I had learned up to two days ago could keep me from being at least a little stressed out about what I was going to do with the 21-oz. frozen rack of spare ribs – in lieu of a package of 5 chops (what were two guys going to do with an odd number?) – I had picked recently from Patches of Star Dairy in the Union Square Greenmarket. I had in fact never cooked spare ribs of any kind, and I couldn’t even locate basic instructions for lamb ribs on line, to say nothing of cabrito.

I wanted to avoid heating the oven on a very warm summer day, so I hoped to pan-grill the meat.  I was reassured about how quickly the ribs might cook by their pale color.  It was almost veal-like.  I decided to use my square enameled cast-iron ribbed grill pan and in the end I pretty much winged it, grabbing some hints about timing from several recipes which were mostly devoted to spicy Indian or Moroccan cooking (I was trying for a more-or-less Italian concept, as usual, one which could be put together with ingredients I had on hand in my small kitchen).

Since the dinner description made it to the blog, it means it was yummy, but I’ll add: “really yummy”.

I have to say however that the Puglian wine with which we accompanied it, which is excellent, which we have always enjoyed many times, and which I’d buy again if I could (I think this was the last bottle from a case we had gotten from Astor Wines), just didn’t seem to stand out with this meal. And yet everything we had loved about it in the past was still there when we savored it alone.

• cabrito spare ribs from Elly Hushour’s Patches of Star Dairy, cut into four pieces and pan-grilled for a total of about 15 minutes, basting all along with a rosemary bouquet/bunch dipped in a mixture of oil, red wine vinegar, salt and pepper (and replacing a very loose cover of tin foil between each herb sweep); accompanied by green beans from Berried Treasures in the Greenmarket, parboiled, drained, dried, then reheated in oil; and small plum tomatoes (Juliet) from Lani’s Farm (again, the Greenmarket), which halved and briefly pan-grilled then brushed with oil and a bit of balsamic vinegar
• wine:  Italian red, Canusio Troia Puglia IGT Rosso Diomede 2005 from Astor Wines & Spirits

The small list of ingredients may look pretty unexciting, but this pasta recipe is actually a small masterpiece.   Also, while sometimes the whole may be declared better than its parts, when the parts are all of the quality of those I managed to assemble for this dish, it should have been obvious from the start that it would be terrific.

• appetizers:  Ligurian olives, fennel-flavored taralli (both from Buon Italia), quartered radishes (from the Union Square Greenmarket) and salt
• drink: Arak (Kefraya, from Lebanon) mixed with water
• Linguine (Linguettine, Setaro, from Buon Italia) cooked with chunks of new red potato and sliced thin string beans from the wonerful Franca at Berried Treasures in the Greenmarket, and finished with a pesto of basil, garlic, pecorino, pine nuts and oil [see Mark Bittman's recipe, "Trenette with Pesto," from the New York Times]
• wine:  Sardinian, La Cala 2009 Vermentino di Sardegna from Phillipe Wine

• two beautiful 6 oz. filets of flounder from from Riverhead’s P.E. & D.D. Seafood in the Union Square Greenmarket which were pat-dried, sprinkled with white wine vinegar and salt, lightly coated with flour and browned in hot olive oil, then removed from the pan, into which a bit of butter, lemon juice and parsley was introduced and heated before being poured over the fish; accompanied by tiny Fairy egglants from Lani’s Farm (also in the Greenmarket), sliced in half and coated with oil, chopped garlic and fresh mint, (all from the Greenmarket), then quickly grilled on a ribbed cast-iron pan; and slices of Tuscan bread from Eataly.
• wine: Loire, an excellent Sancerre Rosé Fournier [pdf link] Les Belles Vignes 2010 (100% Pinot Noir), gift of a generous, wine-savvy friend

I know I can get excited on this blog when things go well in the kitchen, but this time things went very well, and in spite of some less-than-propitious auguries, like still fighting a bad cold, and missing my deadline the night I had planned to do this meal.

I had headed for the Lobster Place on Saturday without any seafood choice in mind, but when I spotted some beautiful Spanish baby octopus in the shellfish area I just couldn’t pass them up.  I had never prepared octopus before, but Barry and I were big fans of octopada, and almost never missed a chance to order them when they were spotted on a menu.

The challenge was engaged once I returned home, but by the time I had decided what to do with them it appeared it was going to be too late to enjoy them that night.  We enjoyed a great inside “picnic” instead, one which was dominated by some extraordinary house-made culatello, and three excellent Italian cheeses, from Buon Italia across the hallway in Chelsea Market.

Meanwhile, since I didn’t want to leave the octopuses overnight without the help of some preservative, after dinner I placed the four little guys in a spicy marinade and returned them to the refrigerator.  Now I had plenty of time to figure out the rest of the menu and shop for the one ingredient (fresh basil) I needed for the contorno I chose the next day, as well as a lemon for the finished octopus.

I was a little scared;  Barry was scared.  But I was totally organized before I turned on the range below the large ribbed grill and a large deep pan, and the octopus turned out awesome, as did the cauliflower.   Also, my expectations for the seafood and vegetable pairing were fulfilled:  The match seemed inspired, even if it was at least partly merely a function of my love for cauliflower and the fact that I already had some cherry tomatoes on hand.

The wine pairing may not have been quite so ideal, even if a very good Italian rose had seemed like it would be spot on. Fortunately we were able to extend the pleasures of the meal longer than usual (it was a warm evening, and both octopus and cauliflower tasted even better as they reached room temperature);  that gave us the time to also try some delightful vinho verde leftover from a meal of a couple of days before.  I think the white worked better than the rose, although we’re definitely going to look into a vinho verde red.

• baby octopus (3 oz. each) from Lobster Place in Chelsea Market, marinated overnight in garlic, oil, lemon, crushed dried japones peppers, and dried Italian oregano, then pan-grilled whole and seasoned, finished with Sorrento lemon from Eataly, oil and fresh oregano; served with flowerets of cauliflower from Manhattan Fruit Exchange sauteed in a pan in which garlic, crushed dried japones peppers, fennel and coriander seeds had been heated, the mix then braised with halved and seeded cherry tomatoes (from Manhattan Fruit Exchange) and finished with torn fresh basil leaves (from Eataly); and slices of a Demi-Baguette from Eataly.
• wine:  Tuscan Rose, Castello di Ama Rosato 2010, from Eataly;  Portuguese Vinho Verde Vera 2010 (gorgeous label!), from Astor Wines

[image from Barry]

I can’t say enough about the quality of the ingredients which went into this meal – or its success.  It was very easy to prepare:  I finished the onions and the kale mostly before putting the very beautiful lattice-marked, pink-fleshed fillets into the pan for just three minutes (two for the lightly-floured skin side, then one more for the other).

Although the bass was joined by what may not have been an obvious choice of vegetables, everything came together beautifully, the wine ennobling all.  Simply delicious.

• small black sea bass fillets (Eastern Long Island waters) from Riverhead’s P.E. & D.D. Seafood in the Union Square Greenmarket, quickly-sauteed then finished with a bit of oil, a squeeze of lemon and some chopped lovage;  accompanied by sweet, juicy spring onions, also from the Greenmarket (Muddy River Farm in Goshen, New York), which were sliced in half and rolled in oil and salt and pepper, then pan-grilled and finished with a sprinkling of balsamic vinegar; and small leaves of Red Russian Kale, from Lani’s Farm (again, the Greenmarket), wilted in oil which had first been heated with bruised whole garlic cloves, then finished with salt and pepper and a few dabs of oil.
• Wine: French Chenin Blanc, a Saumur, Val de Loire Reserve des Vignerons 2010, from Astor Wines

This is an extremely simple meal, but it’s very seasonal, and entirely dependent upon the geographic location of the kitchen, since ramps (wild leeks, Allium tricoccum) are available only for a few weeks in the early spring, and only in certain areas along the coast of eastern North America, from South Carolina into Canada.  They are also becoming extremely popular, the darlings of a growing food sub-cult, and that  is apparently exposing them to overharvesting.

• Ligurian olives and Roberto’s grissini
• spaghetti (superb Afeltra artisanal pasta from Gragnano, near Naples) tossed with sauteed ramps from the Greenmarket and seasoned with red chili flakes, then finished with a topping of homemade dried sourdough bread crumbs which had been heated in a bit of olive oil with a pinch of salt
• wine: Sicilian white, Corvo Fiore 2009, from Eataly Wines

[because I had nothing current, the image used here is actually one used in this post describing a 4/24/10 meal]