This Week’s Menu: Two at the Table Menu Week of May 1 2016

While we didn’t post our menu last weekend, which we can chalk up to focusing instead on a food photography session on Saturday and a portrait photography session on Sunday, we did make some great dishes, like Ina Garten’s Chicken with Morels and Saveur’s Charred Asparagus and Egg Salad, as well as two great shellfish recipes: The New York Times’ Steamed Clams with Spring Herbs and Food & Wine’s Mussels with Cava and Roasted Carrot Romesco. We’re back to our regular schedule this week a recipe of our own (mostly) invention on Monday, an old favorite on Friday, and three new recipes during the week. Here’s what we have planned:

On Monday night, we’ll use up the carrot romesco we made to go along with the mussels mentioned above. We’ll have the romesco sauce on some grilled swordfish, as we’ve done before. Since we’ll have the grill pan going for the swordfish, we’ll also grill some asparagus, which we’ll top with some shaved manchego cheese and a sprinkle of Spanish paprika. We’ll pair this with a 2014 Lobster Reef Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand, which Michael from Wines by the Flask suggested. (As an aside, Lobster Reef has one of the best logos we’ve seen in a long time!)

Monday night’s dinner will be a new recipe: The Kitchen’s Toasted Farro Salad with Fresh Peas, Pea Shoots, and Herbs. We’ve never made farro before, but we’ve had such good success with quinoa, we thought we would give this dish a try. We’ll serve this with a 2014 Alpha Estate Sauvignon Blanc, a Greek wine that Michael suggested.

We’ve been easing our way back into eating meat after our mostly meatless Lent, and on Tuesday we’ll make Food 52’s Green Goddess Chicken Sandwiches. We’ve made green goddess dressing several times before, but this will be the first time we’ll have it with chicken. We bought some small loaves of French bread to use in place of the hamburger buns called for in the recipe. We’ll have the sandwiches with a rose, specifically, a 2015 La Nymphe Tavel, also courtesy of Michael.

We’ll make another Food 52 recipe on Thursday, namely, Food 52’s Coffee Marinated Flank Fajitas with Pico de Gallo. This will be our first time making steak since the start of Lent (so, in at least two months) and it will be a nice treat. We pair this up with some cold beer, possibly an IPA, but more likely something a little lighter.

Last but not least, we’ll be making Food 52’s Cilantro Lime Salmon Cakes with Chipotle Mayo on Friday. We’ve had this dish a couple of times before, as a simple weeknight dinner and as part of our wine and food pairing with Wines by the Flask. We’ll have beer again, most likely a Ballast Point Grapefruit Sculpin IPA. We think the beer’s hopiness will be a nice counterpoint to the spiciness of the chipotle mayo and it’s grapefruit flavor will complement the lime in the salmon cakes.