This Week’s Menu: Two at the Table Menu Week of July 19 2015

While we have some fun plans this week (a Yankee game with our friends Tom and Sharon on Sunday and tickets to see “Hamilton,” Lin-Manuel Miranda’s bold new musical about the founding father and first Secretary of the Treasury, followed by dinner at El Original on Saturday), aside from what will probably be a slightly busier-than-usual work week, we should have plenty of time to cook. So, we’ve picked out four new recipes to try.

The first two play to our new-found realization that we like Asian flavors a lot more than we think we do. (This was further supported by a recent trip to Papa’s Kitchen in Woodside, Queens, a great Filipino restaurant where we not only enjoyed chicken adoba and deep fried pork belly plus green beans in coconut milk, but also sang karaoke. But that’s a story for another post.) Dinner on Monday night will feature two recipes from Food 52: Ginger Glazed Soy Salmon and Thai Style Spicy Pickled Cucumber Relish. Both parts of this meal seem very easy and perfect for a weeknight. Dinner on Tuesday night will feature a recipe from Yellow Table: Korean-Style Grilled Flank Steak with Spicy Cucumbers and Sticky Rice. This dinner will be a little more complicated, as we have to make steak, rice, and the cucumbers, but it all seems very doable. If you’re wondering why our first two meals of the week are so heavy on cucumbers, it’s because Tony miscalculated by a factor of two how many cucumbers he would need for his recent pickle-making project…

We’ll probably order in on Wednesday night, but on Thursday night, we’re going to indulge Tony’s recent obsession with one-pot pasta dishes. Last week, we made Martha Stewart’s One-Pot Pasta and despite our concerns going in, it was great. We’re trying a new recipe, from a blog that we found just this week: The View from Great Island. The recipe is for One Pot Farmer’s Market Pasta and includes a lot more veggies–like asparagus, broccoli, and bell pepper among others. We’re even more curious to see how this dish turns out, since there will be a lot more in the pot, but less water than the other recipe (3 1/2 cups versus 4 1/2 cups).

On Friday night, we’re making Tasting Table’s Tomatillo Shakshuka. We’ve made a version of this dish before using plum tomatoes, which was delicious. Having made the “red” version, we’re excited to make the “green” version. We may have another Queens dining adventure in us, so we may go out for dinner Friday night, but if we do, we’ll just make the shakshuka for lunch on Saturday. We have two pound of tomatillos in the fridge, so one way or another, this dish is getting made!