This Week’s Menu: Two at the Table Menu Week of July 10, 2016

After all the fantastic food we had on vacation in Nice and after taking several days to get back into the swing of things, we are truly inspired to cook this week. We have plans to make dinner every night except one (when we’ll have leftovers!) and five of our six recipes this week are new for Two at the Table.

The only “old favorite” we’ll make this week will grace our table on Sunday: Ina Garten’s Pissaladiere (and Green Salad). While on vacation, we had a fantastic, thin-crust version of this onion-and-sardine topped pizza and we’re going to try to replicate it. We’re making two key changes from when we made the recipe last. First, we’re going to cook the onions a bit longer so that they have even more time to caramelize. Second, we’re using larger (and fresher) sardines, rather than smaller ones from a jar. We’ll pair this dish with a 2015 Sanford Sta. Rita Hills Rose of Pinot Noir that Michael from Columbus Wine & Spirits included when he created a case of summer wines for us a few weeks ago.

We’ll make the first new recipe of the week on Monday: The Yellow Table’s Garlicky Shrimp with White Wine and Tomatoes. This should be a simple, delicious recipe and a great way to start the week. We’ll pair this with the last remaining (non-bubbly) bottle from our  summer wine case: a Centone Grillo from Sicily.

Tony will be on his on Tuesday night and will make Saveur’s Beef and Lamb Koftas with Mustard and Grilled Zucchini. He’ll take advantage of the farmer’s market that sets up shop near his office every Tuesday and buy some fresh bread to have with dinner. He’ll probably pair the koftas with a Montauk Summer Ale or Bronx Brewery Summer Ale – or one of each.

We both have plans Wednesday night and while we won’t be home too late, we will probably be home too late to make dinner. The simplest solution is to have the leftover Pissaladiere along with any leftover wine we might have.

Tony continues to be somewhat obsessed with one-pot dinners, so we’ll make one this Thursday, but one that is very different from others we’ve made before. We’re excited to try Yummly’s One Pot Yakisoba. It sound delicious and has the added advantage of making enough so that we can bring leftovers to work for lunch on Friday

We’ll try another Asian-influenced dish on Friday in the form of The Yellow Table’s Korean Style-Grilled Flank Steak. This will be a bit of a departure for us since we have made very little meat lately, but we’re looking forward to having flank steak for dinner as well as to making banh mi sandwiches over the weekend with the leftover beef.

Last but not least this week will be Saturday’s dinner, which is somewhat inspired by all the delicious seafood we had while in Nice: Saveur’s Mussels with Pale Ale and Spicy Aioli. We’ll buy the mussels for this dish Saturday morning, so that they will be as fresh as possible, along with two other key ingredients: pale ale, which is a key component of the broth in which the mussels are steamed, and crusty French bread, which will be critical to enjoying all the broth. We’ll pair this dinner with whatever pale ale we use to make the mussels.