green market dinner, 9/9/08

I love the late summer, early fall. Produce is abundant and the cooler evenings are conducive to fuller, richer dishes for increased appetites. A recent foraging mission found Union Square Green Market's stalls bountiful with berries, stone fruits, heirloom tomatoes, leafy greens, legumes, and on and on. Jane and I, nibbling on a raspberry-orange muffin, gleefully foraged 1/2 a pound of husk cherries (aka cape gooseberries), 1 pound of red grapes, 1/2 pound of black berries, 1/2 pound of padron peppers, 1 pound of green beans, 4 heads of dark red leaf lettuce, 6 ears of corn, and 1&1/2 pound assorted hierloom tomatoes. This was our dinner, happily shared with Molly and Brad McDonald.







Sheets of pasta drying. Pasta is 8oz of all purpose flour, 6 yolks, 1 whole egg, 1&1/2 teaspoon olive oil, 1 tablespoon milk, pinch of salt.






















Mixing the filling for the cheese cake: 24oz. cream cheese, 2/3 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons all purpose flour, 1/4 cup half and half, 3 eggs.























The crust for the cheese cake is 3/4 stick of butter, 1/2 cup light brown sugar, 3/4 cup all purpose flour, 1/2 cup finely chopped blanched almonds.















Dicing Spanish Mackerel for tartare. This is one of my favorite fish to eat raw. The flesh is richly flavored and luxuriously textured. It can stand up to assertive flavors like chili, wasabi, and ginger. I had some kizami wasabi, the chopped stems and leaves of the wasabi plant, hanging out in my freezer and decided to mix it into the tartare along with small dice of red grape, lime supreme, husk cherry, and assorted hierloom tomatoes.






























Toasted hazelnuts, chopped, added to Handlmaier's hausmachersenf (sweet German mustard), sherry vinegar, hazelnut oil, and canola oil became a dressing for a salad of green beans and dark red leaf lettuce.

















Padron peppers, hierloom tomatoes, husk cherries.


















Glazing pearl onions.

















Most padron peppers are mild and sweet. Perversely, one out of ten is spicy hot. Since Padron peppers are native to Northern Spain, I was surprised and stoked to see them at the green market!



















Blistering padron peppers.





















Green beans.





















"Frenched" green beans.




























Plating the mackerel tartare.






























Spanish mackerel tartare with gooseberries, red grapes, heirloom tomatoes, lime, kizme wasabi, and Jane's homegrown arugula.






















Molly, relaxed, happy, and about to get her grind on!






















Salad of green beans, dark red leaf lettuce with a hazelnut vinny.



















Cutting the tag to order.























Fresh tag with soubise, glazed red pearl onions, roasted corn, blistered padron peppers, and parsley. I will make this again.















Down the hatch.















Mid-dinner still life.
















Brad sniffs the Joly Coulee de Serrant, 2003. This was an immensely interesting wine, with complex aromas and a myriad of flavors on the palate. Some of the things that we smelled and tasted were nuts, honey, amaretto, marzipane, vanilla, coconut, white flowers, clove, apple sauce, dried apricot.














Jane contemplates life and the Joly.



















Cheescake with minted black berries.

















Brad's double-wide-second-helping. He housed it, no prob.





















What we drank. It was a very civilized, delightful evening.