This Week’s Menu: Two at the Table Menu Week of June 18, 2017

We didn’t get a chance to post last week, but we did lots of fun cooking. We decided to go through our cookbooks for recipes, so the links below won’t always take you to the exact recipe, but will of course take you to lots of recipes worth trying. Here is what we made:

Monday: Smitten Kitchen’s Seared Halibut and Gazpacho Salsa with Tomato Vinaigrette. The recipe was fantastic–the fish was light and flaky, the salsa was a great complement, and the vinaigrette was just awesome–and made plenty of left over salsa, which we’ve been enjoying all week.

Tuesday: Food 52’s Cilantro Lime Salmon Cakes. We’ve made this recipe several times before, but we honestly think this was the best batch yet. We paired them with a simple green salad.

Wednesday: Elie Krieger’s Pork Picatta with Spinach and Garlic Mashed Potatoes. We made this with simple steamed spinach and left out the potatoes. This dish was so good that Tony may have discovered that he likes capers (a key ingredient) more than he thinks he does…

Thursday: Skinnytaste’s Baja Grilled Flank Steak Salad. Not only was this quick and delicious, but Tony was also able combined the leftovers with some provolone, pickled red peppers, and lettuce to make a tasty wrap for lunch on Friday.

Friday: Ina Garten’s Roasted Chicken and Radishes. This was a perfect way to end the week. The chicken was tender and juicy with a nice crispy skin and the roasted radishes were caramelized perfectly. Plus, we have leftovers! (Update: The leftovers were every bit as good as the “original” dinner. Warmed up in the oven, the chicken stayed juicy, the skin stayed crisp, and the radishes got even softer and more caramelized!)

As for this week, we both have plans with friends — we’re each having drinks with buddies on Monday night and then joining other friends at the Yankee game Friday night — and also plan to make several new recipes, so it should be a fun week all around.

We’ll have lunch with Tony’s family on Sunday afternoon for Father’s Day, but as his mom is not planning the usual Sunday afternoon food fest, we’ll make dinner Sunday evening. We’re making something light and simple: The Kitchn’s Shrimp with White Beans, Spinach, and Tomatoes. We’ll do some cooking before that too, to make sure Tony has lunch for the week: we will make a batch of The New York Times’ Skillet Macaroni and Broccoli and Mushrooms and Cheese.We made this once before not long ago and it was truly spectacular.

On Tuesday night, we’ll try another new recipe: Saveur’s Cilantro and Lime Chicken with Grilled Corn and Black Bean Salad. The recipe calls for corn on the cob, so we bought a few ears as part of our weekly Fresh Direct grocery order. We’ll have to keep this recipe in mind for later in the summer, as our annual trip to Greenport usually results in us bringing home some fresh sweet corn from Long Island.

We realized that we hadn’t had eggs for dinner in a quite a while. They are simple to make and don’t require having the oven on for too long, so they’re a perfect summertime dish. We’ll make Food 52’s Frittata with Asparagus, Spring Greens and Fontina. Not only will this be tasty dinner, the leftovers will give us some options for breakfast and/or lunch later in he week.

Tony will have some leftover cilantro/lime chicken on Thursday night, while Kim is at a New York Junior League meeting. Friday night will be dinner at Yankee Stadium as we take in a game with our friends Lynee, Rich, Nancy, and Devante. This season, we’ve sampled food from newcomers Mighty Quinn’s and Bareburger and old favorite Lobel’s, so we’re not quite sure what we’ll try this time, but dinner at the ballpark (especially with a cold beer!) can never be a bad thing.

We’ll be back in the kitchen Saturday night, making something relatively simple but supremely comforting: Saveur’s Easy Chicken Parmigiana. The recipe calls for a quarter cup of Italian breadcrumbs, but rather than buy a whole container for just one recipe, we’ll use some panko breadcrumbs we have on hand and just add some spices and dried herbs to them. The recipe starts by making tomato sauce, so hopefully we’ll have some left over to use during the week. We might even feel compelled to call upon our pasta making skills, which we refined by taking a cooking class during our recent trip to Florence, to put the sauce to good use!