This week’s menu: Two at the Table Menu Week of March 15, 2015

We had a bit of a rough start to last week, so we’re going to try to get back on track starting on Sunday. We’re “recycling” a few recipes from last week and adding a few new ones. Here’s what we have planned:

We were supposed to make The Newlywed Kitchen’s Red Wine and Mushroom Risotto on Friday night, but we both got home from work kind of late and decided to order in sushi. (Please note that the link above take you to the recipe on Google books.) We’ll have this on Sunday night and as we noted last week, the recipe uses chicken stock, but we’re going to substitute vegetable stock. We plan to have this with a 2012 Tre Vigne Barbera D’Asti that our friends at Wines by the Flask picked out for us last week.

Kim will be having dinner with friends on Monday night, so Tony will be on his on. On Tuesday, we’re trying a new recipe: the kitchn’s Shrimp with White Beans, Spinach, and Tomatoes. Wins by the Flask picked out a very unusual wine for us to pair with this dish: a 2012 Azienda Agricola Cos Rami Bianco, which is known as an “orange wine”. When wines oxidize, which is what happens when a bottle is opened and the wine comes into contact with air, they develop different flavors. As Eric explained it to Tony, with orange wines, the wine makers start the oxidation process during fermentation, in the hopes of introducing a very different flavor profile. We’re very excited to try this wine; it’s like nothing we’ve ever had (or even heard of) before.

We wanted to do something simple on Wednesday night and our friend Alexandra came up with a great idea for us in the form of Bon Appetit’s Avocado Toasts. We’ll have this with a simple green salad and a 2011 Trimbach Gewürztraminer. The sweetness of the wine should be a nice balance to the spiciness of the red pepper flakes that feature in the recipe.

On Thursday night, we’ll have Food & Wine’s Barbecue Shrimp with a simple green salad, which is another dish we were supposed to have last week. Wines by the Flash picked out a 2012 Cederberg Chenin Blanc from South Africa for us to try with this dish, but we opened that to have with the sushi (which turned out to be a pretty good pairing, by the way), so we picked up another bottle for dinner on Thursday.

We’re going with pure comfort food on Friday and making Ina Garten’s Easy Tomato Soup and Grilled Cheese Croutons. We’ve made this before and it really is as easy as the name would lead you believe. Winter seems to be on its way out here in New York City, but it’s not entirely gone yet, so this dish will be a nice way to stay warm and cozy until spring truly arrives. Normally, we’d have a dish like this with beer, but we wanted to try something different. Wines by the Flask suggested a 2013 Cateus des Tours Brouilly, which is made from Gamay grapes. This is a lighter-bodied red, which should complement the soup without overwhelming it.