Thanks to the Union Square greenmarket and good fishmongers, we enjoyed some very good meals at home this weekend, once again in excellent weather, windows open to the garden.

Only now as I'm composing this entry do I realize that two of these suppers seem quite closely related. I experienced them as totally distinct when planning and sitting down to them, but I'm still surprised that the outward similarities (from happenstance, and from the modest bounty of our larder) didn't occur to me at the time.

Friday, August 22

yellow heirloom tomato, basil, oil, Boucheron, Ciabatta ring

grilled tuna steaks paved with crushed fennel, chilies, drizzled with lemon, oil
halved and grilled San Marzano plum tomatoes, finished with oil and lemon thyme
sauteed Pimientos de Padrón sprinkled with salt

baby yellow watermelon

Rioja Reserve Riscal, served slightly chilled

Sunday, August 24

red heirloom tomatoes, basil, oil, Boucheron, Panelle

Arctic char fillet pan-grilled on bed of salt, dribbled with excellent Spanish oil
boiled small red new potatoes, oil and parsley
grilled miniature sweet yellow, red, orange bell peppers sprinkled with salt

Kulfi Pistachio Cardamon ice cream

Argentine Torrontes Torino

[first image from nygirleatsworld; second from reimerseeds]

untitled (silver fish) 2008

I pass this and the many other rich, Chinese open-market landscapes of dried meat, fish and vegetables to be found on Chrystie Street virtually every time I'm in the area. I snapped this shot very quickly last Saturday, while trying trying not to get out of step, because of the crowds of serious shoppers.

waiting for dinner

The larger of these four heirloom tomatoes were just too weird to pass up at the Norwich Meadows Farm stand at the Union Square Greenmarket yesterday. At least half of them will be giving their all tonight.

do it yourself

Those who know us are already aware that Barry and I like to eat well. Okay, I know this may sound absurd these days, but we actually dine, at least on most evenings. We often go out to performances and such, so those evening meal times would not seem strange to most Madrileños.

But, for any number of reasons, those hours being one of them, we don't dine often enough with friends. Fortunately I like to cook, I like thinking about and planning meals, and shopping for the food. Most surprising (even to me), I even like cleaning up afterward. All of that can take up a larger part of the day than most people can spare: We know we're lucky we can enjoy the time I have for both of us since I was able to "retire" almost a decade ago. Since I'm also distracted by so many other interests I can't blame my insufficiently-frequent blogging on our eating habits alone, but maybe I can use that connection to help justify this particular post.

We eat very well, meaning we sit down for a leisurely meal and use real napkins. There's great music, amazing conversation and sometimes exceptional (but usually inexpensive) wine. Of course everything in the room has to look really good. Sometimes there are birds singing out in the garden, even very late at night. Wow. That does sound good, and it's only about 6 o'clock right now.

There's no fast or junk food (unless occasionally ordering good pizza or Mexican dishes from trusted neighborhood sources counts), the ingredients vary hugely, and all their sources as natural, organic, seasonal and local as I can find. We don't include meat of any kind very often, and then it's in pretty small amounts. Cooking fairly regularly these days, I find I'm able to incorporate any extra any amounts of fresh ingredients and condiments, and any leftovers, in succeeding meals, so very little is wasted. I'm also getting better at letting what I find in our local Greenmarkets, and even in daily visits to the several decent food stores near our apartment, determine what the evening meal is going to be. I look for sales from meat and fish vendors. I'm improvising more.

I know I'm talking about habits and opportunities which are unimaginable luxuries for most New Yorkers today - and perhaps for most Americans anywhere, even the wealthy. We try to invite friends over as often as we can, but it's never often enough as far as we're concerned. Part of the problem, at least for me, has always been my difficulty in visiting with anyone while I'm busy in a small kitchen not set up so guests could hang out. We tend to concentrate on any number of baked pastas prepared ahead of time when friends sit down with us in our home the first time, but I have to feel that's pretty restrictive in spite of how good those recipes are.

I thought sharing in this space what some of the more successful (and particularly simple and easily-prepared) one-course meals we've enjoyed alone recently might not do any harm, and it could conceivably encourage me to expand my range as host. Of course not every meal's a winner; I jotted these notes down after meals we liked especially over the past month or so:

Saturday, April 12

Sicilian-sautéed swordfish steaks
Boiled parslied red new potatoes with olive oil
Grilled ramps

Sicilian Munir Bianco 2006

Thursday, April 17

Grilled marjoram-stuffed baby squid with a sauce of lemon, hot chilies and olive oil
Boiled new potatoes with olive oil and thyme
Boiled and sautéed spring green beans from Georgia

Galician Albarino, Rias Baixas Salneval 2006

Friday, May 1

Ligurian baked Cod with potatoes
Grilled spring scallions

Vermentino di Sardegna

Monday, May 6

Lemon-and white-wine-braised pork chops,
finished with fingerling potatoes and Marjoram
Grilled spring scallions

Spanish Rueda (Naia)

Sunday, May 18

Small marinated eye-of-round steaks
Oven-roasted potato chips (wedges) with rosemary, finished with parsley
Roasted whole carrots, finished with thyme

Cotes du Rhone (Estezargues Grandes Vignes 2006)

Wednesday, May 21

Grilled duck sausages
Rosemary-roasted fingerling potatoes finished with spring garlic
Grilled ramps

Austrian (Burgenland) Blauer Zweigelt Nittnaus 2006

[images, starting at the top, from esterlange; room 9; deep sea news; wildeducation; encore editions; oceansbridge; tunisia info

Juan Gris Fruit Dish, Glass, and Lemon (Still Life with Newspaper) 1916 oil on canvas 28.75" x 23.5"

I don't know anything about cooking, but I know what I like. No, that's not quite right. I do know something about cooking, and I know when it's right, but I'm not really a creative chef. When it comes to the things I love (including the arts) maybe I usually get by with only an intense curiosity about the new, a certain amount of taste and a good deal of almost-academic deliberateness.

I started cooking years ago while a graduate student at Brown. Perhaps imagining myself more impecunious than I really was, I convinced myself that learning to cook would be the most reliable way to be certain that I would eat very well - at least some of the time.

I can report right now that two nights ago Barry and I ate really well. No, it wasn't the first time, but I did get pretty excited about it, partly because it was so unexpected - and so easy. It's now Wednesday, and the immediate near-ecstasy of the moment has passed, but I told myself while clearing the table on Monday that I had to write about a meal which, although rather casually assembled, ended up an almost perfect little Italian table. I wish I could pull that off every night, and even more to the point, I wish we could share it with others more often than we do.

I had spent several final hours at the Armory show that afternoon while Barry stayed home to work, and when I returned home I wanted to go through mail and post a bit before dinner, so my early-evening Whole Foods trek for provisions was more perfunctory than usual. At the market I decided on squid (I know, it was don't-buy seafood-on-Monday, but they looked and smelled great) and some very fresh-looking broccoli rabe. While there I remembered I had a small net of golden fingerling potatoes hanging on a hook at home.

Altogether it was a pretty modest Italian meal, especially since only if I were to count our eager "seconds" could I begin to relate it to the three or four courses and dessert tradition:

Dressed Squid briefly roasted in the oven together with crumbled red chilies, dried oregano, a bit of olive oil and the juice of half a Meyer lemon;

potatoes on the same plate, also roasted in a baking dish in the oven, but for a full half hour, after being cut lengthwise into four pieces, mixed together in a bowl with chopped garlic, oregano leaves (the recipe had specified marjoram, but the larder showed only the fresh form of the dried herb called for with the squid), a little olive oil and this time two lemons, each cut into twelve wedges and squeezed with the rest of the ingredients;

the very green contorni, served in separate bowls, was the rabe, quickly boiled, drained and then sauteed in a pan which had first heated a few garlic slices in olive oil;

the wine was a simple bottle of Fiano Di Avellino from Campania.

The pleasures were of both the palate and the eye, as they must be with a good meal.

I was amazed at how fantastic the seafood and the potatoes both looked and tasted together, and the vegetable was as perfect a visual contrast as it was a gustatory one.

The cooking utensils, my old white-lined blue enamel NACCO baking pan for the squid, a red-brown terra cotta rectangular pan for the potatoes and a heavy, black Wagner iron frying pan for the greens, all eventually found a home on top of our high-legged dark green and cream deco 73-year-old range, but there never seems to be time for pictures at these moments. Sitting at the old maple turned-leg drop-leaf in the breakfast room we ate off sturdy cream and mushroom-colored Shenango restaurant ware, with small lightly-tinted ribbed-glass Duraflex kitchen bowls on the side for the greens. Once again we found this really good homey restaurant in the middle of Manhattan; we'll be going back.

The recipes I used for the squid and the potatoes are from the really excellent "Italian Easy: Recipes from the London River Cafe
by Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers, which is accurately summarized in Amazon's editorial review: "These are visually spectacular, remarkably simple recipes for those who love good food but have little time to prepare it."

[image from the Artchive]