This Week’s Menu: Two at the Table Menu Week of November 15, 2015

It’s going to be a busy week again for Two at the Table. Kim has commitments at the New York Junior League almost every night this week, plus we have a fun trip to Hudson, NY planned for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday with our friends Tom and Sharon. Nevertheless, we’re going to try a few new recipes this week, plus an old favorite.

First up is Black Bean Espresso Chili for Sunday night. This is a recipe that originally appeared in Bon Appetit. Tony is somewhat skeptical about this recipe for two reasons. First, it contains beans, which disqualifies is as chili as far as Texans are concerned. Second, the chili contains no meat, which will probably also concern any Texans reading our blog! But as Tony has learned from his very successful attempts at making Winter Vegetable Chili, good chili can come in many forms.

On Monday night, Tony will have the much-anticipated Free-Form Autumn Vegetable Tart with Bacon Marmalade from Food & Wine. We knew this was an ambitious project when we first put it on the menu last week, but despite dividing the labor (Tony made the jam and prepped the autumn vegetables and Kim made the dough), we just could not find the time and energy to make this dish on a weeknight. We actually never did; we’re making it on Sunday afternoon for a late lunch and will have leftovers on Monday.

Tony saw that sea bass was rated pretty highly on Fresh Direct, so he found a recipe that would let him take advantage of that and make a nice dinner on Tuesday: Sea Bass with Prosciutto and Sage, also from Food & Wine. This dish is an interesting variation on an Italian classic: Chicken Saltimboca (literally, “chicken that jumps into your mouth”), so Tony is anxious to try it. He’ll pair this with some cous cous, just to mix things up a bit.

On Wednesday, Tony will have one of our favorite dishes and, if we’re being honest, one of the few recipes we know by heart: Ina Garten’s Chicken with Goat Cheese and Sundried Tomatoes. While it’s not super-fast–you should allow an absolute minimum of 35 minutes in a 350 degree oven to cook a bone-in chicken breast, which is what we’re using for this recipe–it is very easy to prepare. (Though the recipe says to use a boneless, skin-on chicken breast, we always use bone-in, skin-on chicken. It takes a little longer to cook, but we find that chicken on the bone almost always tastes better than boneless.)

For dinner on Thursday, Tony was poking around the freezer to see if we had any Romesco sauce left over, (sadly, we didn’t), but found two boneless pork loin chops, so he’ll use those up to make Pork with Grapes and Tarragon. We found this recipe over the summer and wanted to try it then, but never worked in into our menus. Tony’s excited to give it a go!

We leave for Hudson after work on Friday and won’t be back until Sunday evening, so there won’t be much cooking for Two at the Table over the weekend, but with all the great restaurants in Hudson, there will be no lack of eating!