Two at the Table_Menu_Week of January 18 2015

We have lots of new recipes to try out this week, including from our two newest cookbooks, Gina Homolka’s “The Skinnytaste Cookbook” and Anna Watson Carl’s “The Yellow Table”. Here’s what we have planned:

On Sunday afternoon, we met up with our friends Lynee and Mary Ellen to watch the Packers-Seahawks playoff game. We knew we were going to indulge in a lot of tasty bar food – beer, nachos, wings, fries – so we figured that would be our dinner.

On Monday night, we’re making our first dish from “The Yellow Table”: Roasted Chicken with Lemon, Thyme, and Shallots. This one sounded perfect, for a number of reasons. The weather, predictably for January in New York, is cold and grey, which calls for comfort food, as far as we’re concerned. The dish does not take a lot of time to make, but it is always easier to make a chicken dish when you have a little time to spare, which we do today, because we both have the day off from work. Most important of all, we love all the flavors, especially the combination of chicken and thyme. (Please note that the link above will take you to The Yellow Table website; you’ll have to buy the book to get this specific recipe!)

On Tuesday night, Kim has plans with her work colleagues, so Tony is going to make something he knows Kim wouldn’t be partial to: Bay Scallops Provencal, from a recipe he found in The New York Times. Bay scallops were highly rated on Fresh Direct this week, plus, last week was very meat-centric, so a little seafood sounded like a good idea.

Wednesday night will see us making a new recipe from “The Skinnytaste Cookbook“, namely, Crustless Swiss Chard Pie. We both love chard and haven’t had it for a while, so this recipe sounded perfect. Plus, it will make some leftovers, which will give us options for interesting lunches. (As with the Roasted Chicken with Lemon, Thyme, and Shallots recipe, the link above will take you to the Skinnytaste web site.)

On Thursday night, we’re going to have more of the delicious Short Rib Ragu we made last week, this time served over polenta. We’re going to modify one of our favorite polenta recipes a bit, Ina Garten’s Creamy Parmesan Polenta, by leaving out the Parmesan cheese and creme fraiche. The ragu is so rich on its own that we thought that adding cheese to it, even indirectly in the polenta, would be overkill.

Friday night is our fifth anniversary, so we’ll be heading out for a special dinner. We took our honeymoon to Spain and Portugal, so we thought the Iberian inspired menu at Aldea would be a perfect way to remember out wonderful trip.

We have ballet tickets Saturday night, so we thought we’d make a simple dinner at home. We haven’t made any of Rachel Khoo’s recipes recently, so we decided to try her Tomatoes Stuffed with Crab. Since the recipe uses cooked crab meat and only involves roasting the tomatoes for about 15 minutes, we figured it would be easy to make before the performance.