This Week’s Menu: Two-at-the-Table-Menu-Week-of-October-23-2016

We had a great trip upstate last weekend, but since we knew we weren’t going to have time to plan our menu and shop as usual, we picked up a few pre-made things (a roasted chicken, a small tray of lasagna) to get us through the week. We’re back to cooking this week, with a menu featuring three new dishes, plus a new spin on one we’ve had before.

Sunday dinner, however, will be a not-so-old favorite: Ina Garten’s French Chicken Pot Pies. We made this dish about this time last year and really enjoyed it, so we decided to make it again. (It certainly didn’t hurt that we already had some cooked chicken in the fridge!) We’ll again have to take the somewhat unusual step of cutting a recipe in thirds (the recipe makes six pies), but last time we found that this wasn’t a major challenge. We’ll pair this with a 2013 Lavau Rasteau, a Cotes du Rhone picked out by our friends Neil and Michael at Columbus Wine and Spirits.

Kim will be at a New York Junior League board meeting on Monday, so Tony will be on his own. He decided to try a new recipe, Saveur’s Honey Grilled Chicken With Citrus Salad, which will make enough to give him leftovers for dinner on Wednesday night, when Kim is at her French class. The recipe calls for the chicken to be grilled for 15 minutes, but since our apartment would fill with smoke if we tried to grill anything for that long, Tony will roast the chicken and just finish the chicken on the grill pan. Tony will pair this dish with a 2013 Trimbach Reserve Riesling and be sure to save some of Kim’s favorite type wine for her for when she comes home.

We’ll have seafood on Tuesday, namely Bon Appetit’s Roast Salmon and Broccoli with Chile-Caper Vinaigrette. We still have a few of the hot peppers from Tony’s father’s garden, so this recipe has the added advantage of letting us use up at least one (small) thing from our fridge! We’ll have this one with a South African wine: a 2015 Protea Chenin Blanc, which is perhaps one of the prettiest bottles of wine we’ve ever purchased.

We’ve had such great success recently with dishes from The Kitchn that contain coconut, like 30-Minute Green Curry Braised Salmon and the The Easiest Thai Green Coconut Curry, that we picked one another one for this week: The Kitchn’s Quick Coconut Chicken Soup. This promises to be a pretty easy-to-make dinner, plus one that lets us use a new ingredient: rutabaga. This dish was a bit of challenge for Neil and Michael, but they came through with a 2015 Clos du Mont-Oliver Chateauneuf-du-Pape to pair with it.

While we’ll be making something very familiar on Friday night (roast pork tenderloin with sautéed spinach), we’re adding a unique ingredient: mole poblano from a company called Xilli. We tried the mole at a charity event last week, the Start Small, Think Big Second Annual Pop Up Party, and we’re blown away, so we had to buy a jar. Start Small, Think Big is a not-for-profit organization that helps “low- to moderate-income individuals build and sustain thriving businesses.” We tried such fantastic food at the party–like quite possibly the best red velvet cupcakes we’ve ever had, from A Cake Baked in Brooklyn, Bourbon Chocolate Sauce made using Hudson Baby Bourbon, one of our favorite bourbons, from Harlem Chocolate Factory, and out-of-this-world smoked gouda mac-and-cheese from Clean Plate Co., soon to be offered at a Whole Foods near you–that it inspired us to do something a little different for dinner. Thanks to our good friend Krista who told us about the amazing event and nonprofit.

After all the cooking this week, we’re still not done. We’re working on the final menu, but we are planning an Oktoberfest dinner for Saturday night. While we know that we will be making Alton Brown’s Homemade Soft Pretzels , we still working on the rest of the menu, so tune in later in the week to see what we’ve decided to make!