This Week’s Menu: Two at the Table Menu Week of November 29, 2015

We took a bit of a hiatus last week, as we had lots of fun dinner plans already laid out, including a trip to Hudson, NY that wrapped up on Sunday; a fun night at the New York Junior League’s Thanksgiving Eve Ball (on Wednesday, of course); and Thanksgiving dinner with Tony’s parents, on, well, Thanksgiving. We decided we would order in/eat out the other days of the week last week. We have another busy week planned, with each of us having plans with friends on Thursday (through we will try to have some snacks that night) and us having plans together on Friday and Saturday. Nevertheless, we’re planning on making four dinners this week: two tried-and-true favorites and two new recipes.

Monday night will feature tried-and-true favorite #1: Food & Wine’s Winter Vegetable Chili, which we have made and enjoyed several times. This time will be a little different, as we’ll be using both carrots and parsnips that we bought at the Hudson Farmer’s Market during out trip last week. We’ll pair the chili up with a variety of IPAs from the Southern Tier Brewing Company for a little beer tasting.

Tuesday night will feature tried-and-true favorite #2: Real Simple’s Flaky Mushroom and Gruyère Tarts, which we have also made several times. We’ll mix it up this time by using mushrooms that we haven’t combined in the tart before: shitake mushrooms, maitake mushrooms (also known as Hen of the Woods mushrooms), and oyster mushrooms. We’ll pair this up with a 2013 La Damnee Des Prieur Sancerre.

We’ll be trying something new on Tuesday, namely Food & Wine’s Salmon and Citrus Salad with Poppy Seed Dressing. We picked this out because it looked easy and delicious. While the ingredients (orange, grapefruit, and avocado) may make it a little better suited for summer, we wanted to give it a try. Michael of Wines by the Flask took us in a very different direction with this and suggested a Beaujolais Nouveau, specifically, a 2011 Beaujolais-Villages Jean-Mare 2011.

On Wednesday, we’ll be putting an Asian spin on dinner, with two new recipes from The New York Times that appeared a few weeks ago in a Food section that focused on easy recipes. We’ll be having Miso Chicken and Baby Bok Choy with Oyster Sauce. We’ll probably make some rice as well, just to soak up all the tasty sauce. We’ll pair this with a 2012 Sur Lie Muscadet Sevre et Maine, also suggested by Michael.

On Thursday night, we will both probably be home on the later side, so we decided to have an indoor picnic, featuring delicious cheeses from Dutch Girl Cheese along with some dried sausage and (more!) cheese from Chaseholm Farm, all of which we found at the Hudson Farmer’s Market. With such fatty foods on the menu, we thought it would be good to introduce some palate-cleansing bubbles into the mix, and will open a bottle of Gruet sparkling wine.