This Weeks’ Menu: Two at the Table Menu Week of June 14 2015

This will be a quiet week for us with no after-work plans, but we’re still keeping things simple, mostly in the interests of not having the oven on much now that the warm weather has really come to New York City. We do have a dinner party planned for friends on Saturday night, so we will get a chance to make lots of fun favorites. Here’s what we have on the menu for this week.

We had planned to make Fish Tacos with Tomatillo Jalapeño Salsa on Friday night, but when we got home we saw that: a) the fish had basely started to defrost and b) the salsa, which had defrosted completely, was very watery. The first problem would have been easy to fix (we usually put the whole package of whatever we need to finish defrosting into a sink full of warm water for a few minutes), but short of straining the salsa (which we thought would leach out a lot of the taste) or reducing it over heat (which seemed like a lot of work), we couldn’t solve the second problem. So, we put the still frozen fish back into the freezer, threw away the salsa, noting that it didn’t freeze well, and pushed the tacos to Sunday. We’ll keep the tacos simple and just garnish them with avocado and lime juice, but we are definitely going to make Melissa d’Arabian’s Spicy Grilled Corn to go with them.

Kim got a nice surprise from her mom in the mail last week: a copy of her Great Aunt Kathryn’s recipe for gazpacho.  We’ll have that on Tuesday, along with some shrimp cooked on the grill pan, which should both make for a quick, easy dinner.

Tony was in the mood for steak this week, so he picked out a new recipe to try: Saveur Magazine’s Grilled Ginger Marinated Flank Steak. The marinade for the steak includes toasted sesame oil, lime juice, honey, garlic, and of course, ginger. These are flavors we don’t mix too often, so we’re excited to give this recipe a try. We’re debating whether to serve this with beer or to try to stump Michael at Wines by the Flask and have him come up with a wine pairing, but we’re leaning toward seeing what Michael can come up with!

On Wednesday night, we’re having “Dutch Treats”, namely, the tasty cheeses that we brought back from our trip to Amsterdam, paired with the mustards we also bought, a little dried sausage, and some fun breads we found on Fresh Direct, like raisin pecan bread. We also though it would be fun to have one of the dishes that we seemed to see on every menu on our trip: white asparagus. This is a Northern European specialty that we enjoyed very much, so we though we’d give it a try.  We’re going to use food.com’s recipe for Spargel (white asparagus with Hollandaise sauce) to help us figure out how to cook the asparagus, but rather than serve it with a heavy sauce, we’re just going to use some lemon juice and maybe a little butter.

We’re trying out a new recipe on Thursday night as well: The Kitchn’s Baked Goat Cheese with Spring Lettuce Salad. This is an interesting recipe that involves cutting the goat cheese into disks, which are marinated  in olive oil and herbs and then coated with panko bread crumbs and baked in the oven.

We’ll have dinner out on Friday and our special dinner on Saturday, for which we’ll post an entirely new menu late this week. Check back then for some ideas on how to put together a simple summertime dinner party!