Two at the Table_Menu_Week of October 12 2014

We took a bit of a week off this week, but ended in pretty spectacular fashion by making a full on Italian feast on Saturday for my Very Italian Mother and Very Italian Father to celebrate their 49th anniversary. I started making tomato sauce early in the morning and we spent most of the late afternoon and early evening getting everything else ready. All the planning for Saturday’s dinner got us excited for next week, so we planed another great menu of dinners. The best part is many of the dishes will produce leftovers, so we’ll have lots of fun lunches too.

On Sunday, we’re going to have a dish that we only made once last winter and have been waiting to make again since then: Winter Vegetable Chili from “Food + Wine”. This recipe gets its heat from chili powder, chipotle in adobo, and adobo sauce, so it has a deep, powerful heat, but is not over-the-top spicy. It also contains hominy, which gives the chili a bit more body (not that it needs much more!) and a nice but not overwhelming corn flavor. We’re really looking forward to taking this one to work later in the week.

Monday night, we will make Ina Garten’s Swordfish with Tomatoes and Capers, a very easy dish that we’ve made a few times before. We decided on this one when we saw that swordfish was very highly rated on Fresh Direct and on sale too.

We’re going to stick with Ina Garten for Tuesday nights’ dinner and make her Parmesan Risotto. This is a great recipe, because it gives you all the rich flavor and creamy texture of risotto, but because it is made in the oven, rather than on the stove top, you don’t have to spend lot of time stirring and stirring until it’s done. This is another good recipe for leftovers.

On Wednesday, we plan to make Roast Chicken and Artichokes With Cilantro-Caper Sauce from the May 2014 issue of “Real Simple”. This recipe involves roasting chicken with marinated artichoke hearts and then dressing it with a mixture of shallots, cilantro, capers, vinegar, and olive oil. We’ve never made this dish before and we’re excited to give it a try.

Our dear friends Tom and Sharon are having us over for dinner on Thursday, so we’ll have the night off, but we’ll be back with another new recipe on Friday when we make another “Food + Wine recipe: Kale & White Bean Stew. Despite being a stew, this is a pretty quick recipe, though it will involve a bit of chopping. The leftovers from his dish will probably show up as lunch on Sunday.

We have opera tickets Saturday night, so we’ll have dinner before the show. It will be nice to take a night off, but we’re looking forward to a fun week of cooking!