Two at the Table

This Week’s Menu: Two at the Table Menu Week of July 7 2015

Things have been a little hectic the past few weeks, but we’ve managed to make some fun new dishes, like Food & Wine’s Shrimp and Asparagus Risotto and Corn and Black Bean Tortilla Tart from the Hip Foodie Mom blog. This week, however, is going to be a quiet week for cooking for Two at the Table, because we have so many fun things planned.

We’re going to the Yankee game with our friends Chris and Susanne on Sunday and will probably grab dinner together afterwards.

Kim will be out both Monday and Tuesday nights, so Tony will be on his own. He managed to score some leftovers from his mom: her sauce (with meatballs and sausage) and some pasta, so he’ll enjoy that on the nights when Kim is out. He’s thinking (more like dreaming) about a meatball sub on Monday night and a great, big helping of mom’s pasta on Tuesday night.

We will do some cooking Wednesday night: the Grilled Cheese Sandwiches with Truffle Oil that we planned to have last week, but that got bumped when we found ourselves in Flushing, Queens and decided that we had to have Chinese food. We did, and it was awesome. The restaurant was called Kung Fu Xiao Long Bao and it specializes in dumplings. We had the steamed crab and pork buns, the pork vegetable wontons in spicy sauce, the scallion pancake, and the Shanghai noodles. Everything was spectacular, especially the pork vegetable wontons, which were just the right amount of spicy and came with a thick, delicious sesame sauce. (We debated whether it was peanut, but decided it was sesame.) The stars of the show, as you can imagine, were the buns. They were not only filled with meat, but also a delicate broth, which explains why one reviewer on Trip Advisor called them (in a positive way) “soupy dumplings.” We were the only non-locals in the place, so we watched how everyone else was eating them: putting them in a spoon, biting off the tops, sucking out the broth, and then eating the dumpling. There was something vaguely vampirish about it all, but it did seem like the best way to enjoy each component of the dumpling.  We ate them the “wrong” way (we just gobbled them up, soup and all, before we realized there was a technique to it), so we’re trying to figure out an excuse to find ourselves in Flushing again so we can go back and get it right!

We’re going to be in Nashville for a wedding from Friday through Sunday, so we won’t be doing any cooking those days. We have a very early flight on Friday morning, so we’ll probably order in on Thursday so that we have more time to pack for our flight. We’re going to try several restaurants in Nashville and are excited to visit them all. A trip to the South without barbecue seems like a wasted trip to us, so we’re having lunch on Friday at Edley’s Bar-B-Que. Dinner on Friday will be at Husk, where Chef Sean Brock has a rule that we’re happy to abide by: “If it doesn’t come from the South, it’s not coming through the door.” The menu looks great and should provide plenty of fuel for the honky-tonking we plan to do Friday night! (We’ve been told on good authority that it’s a bit too hot in Nashville in July for cowboy boots, but we’re wearing them anyway!) Since the wedding isn’t until 3:30 p.m., we’re going to have time for brunch/lunch, so we’re visiting The Southern. We’re both drooling over the Southern Burger, which comes with jalapeno bacon, pimento cheese, and fried onions. Our flight on Sunday isn’t until 4:00 p.m., so we’re going to explore the 12 South neighborhood, which is home to lots of funky shops. It should be a nice way to wrap up what looks to be a fun weekend!

This Week’s Menu: Two at the Table–Week of June 28, 2015

We’re making four new recipes this week, ranging from Indian to Mexican to classic American (with a twist), plus having leftover Shrimp and Asparagus Risotto, and having dinner out Friday and Saturday night.  It should be a fun week for Two at the Table; here’s what we have in store:

Kim wanted to do something ambitious for Sunday dinner and decided to make Indian food, specifically, Real Simple’s Easy Samosas (but using puff pastry a suggested in these Baked Samosas) to start plus Tandoori Shrimp with Rice and Peas as our main course. We also found a recipe for Garam Masala, a spice mixture we’ll need to make the Tandoori Shrimp, on All Recipes. We’ve never made Indian food before, so we’re excited to see how this turns out!

On Monday night, since we both have plans for brief get-togethers with friends/family after work, we’ll keep it simple and make Ina Garten’s Salmon and Guacamole Sandwiches. If you follow our blog, you’ll know we’re huge Ina Garten fans, so we’re excited to try this recipe for the first time. If you’ve been following our blog recently, you know we’ve been making lots of sandwiches over the past few weeks. We both love a good sandwich, including for dinner, and will make them when the mood strikes us. The fact that they are generally fast and easy and involve limited oven time, which keeps our small kitchen/apartment cooler, makes them perfect for when we get busy and/or the weather heats up.

Tuesday’s dinner will be left-over risotto, but on Wednesday night, we’ll make Corn and Black Bean Tortilla Tart from the Hip Foodie Mom blog. You might remember we made the Hip Foodie Mom’s Mushroom, Onion, and Thyme Galette during Lent, which was outstanding, so we know the tart will be excellent too!

For dinner on Thursday night, Kim is going to recreate into a main course an appetizer that she had at a work event last week: Grilled Cheese Sandwiches with Truffle Oil. These were served as small, open-faced sandwiches drizzled with truffle oil.  We’ll use the same brands of bread and excellent Gruyère cheese that we used for the Tomato, Chard, and Gruyère Casserole we made a few weeks ago plus the truffle oil that we brought back from our trip to Tuscany last year.

We haven’t quite settled on where to have dinner on Friday or Saturday night, but we’re feeling a little adventurous, so a trip to Queens Friday night and a trip to France (or at least the new French market place Le District) Saturday might be called for! 

This Week’s Menu: Two at the Table Menu Week of June 21, 2015

This week looks to be a little crazy–last week was too, and we ended eating out more than we planned and shuffling other dishes around–so our menu this week is pretty simple. We’ll mostly make do with what we have in the fridge, but we’ll also make some fun sandwiches as well as a new risotto recipe on Friday. Here’s what we have planned for the week.

We did have our Dutch Treats last week, but we got home pretty late that night, so we decided to pass on cooking the white asparagus using food.com’s recipe for Spargel (white asparagus with Hollandaise sauce).  We were at Tony’s parents’ place for Father’s Day on Sunday, having our usual full-on Italian feast, so we’ll keep dinner simple, namely, the asparagus and the cheeses we bought during out trip.

Kim will be at a Junior League meeting on Monday, so Tony will be on his own. He hasn’t decided what he’ll have yet, but he’ll probably order in. He’s had Indian food on the brain for a few days now after watching an episode of Alton’s Brown’s Good Eats titled  “The Curious Case of Curry,” so Kim should not be surprised to come home to find Tony enjoying samosas, chicken tikka masala, and a cold India Pale Ale.

One of the dishes we moved around a bit last week, from Tuesday to Friday, was Saveur Magazine’s Grilled Ginger Marinated Flank Steak. The steak was spectacular, but we somehow managed to have some  left over, so we decided to make banh mi sandwiches for dinner on Tuesday. We still have to buy the bread for this, which should not be too hard to find, but we do have carrots, half-sour pickles and radishes, which will make for nice garnishes, as well as the ingredients to make sriracha mayonnaise, which will give the sandwiches a nice kick.

On Wednesday, we’ll continue the theme of using up things in the freezer and have the last of the Short Rib Ragu, which should allow us to have a fast but delicious dinner which will be paired with a green salad.

We will buy a bunch of radishes for the banh mi sandwiches, so we’ll use the rest of them in The Splendid Table’s Radish Sandwiches with Butter and Salt, we’ll have on Thursday. We’ve had these before for lunch and they were delicious, so we’re excited to try them again, but this time for dinner and this time with a lot more radishes!

We’ll be trying a new dish on Friday night: Food & Wine’s Shrimp and Asparagus Risotto. Our go to risotto dish is Ina Garten’s Parmesan Risotto, which is as delicious as it is simple. This new recipe is a little more involved, but still looks pretty easy and we’re looking forward to the challenge.

We have a gift card to Tavern on the Green burning a hole in our pockets, so we plan to have dinner there Saturday night. We have tickets to a matinée performance of “An Act of God” starring Jim Parsons from “The Big Bang Theory,” so we thought it would be fun to sit in the Tavern’s new beer garden for a while after the show and then head inside for dinner. It should be a fun evening and a great end to another week for Two at the Table.

This Weeks’ Menu: Two at the Table Menu Week of June 14 2015

This will be a quiet week for us with no after-work plans, but we’re still keeping things simple, mostly in the interests of not having the oven on much now that the warm weather has really come to New York City. We do have a dinner party planned for friends on Saturday night, so we will get a chance to make lots of fun favorites. Here’s what we have on the menu for this week.

We had planned to make Fish Tacos with Tomatillo Jalapeño Salsa on Friday night, but when we got home we saw that: a) the fish had basely started to defrost and b) the salsa, which had defrosted completely, was very watery. The first problem would have been easy to fix (we usually put the whole package of whatever we need to finish defrosting into a sink full of warm water for a few minutes), but short of straining the salsa (which we thought would leach out a lot of the taste) or reducing it over heat (which seemed like a lot of work), we couldn’t solve the second problem. So, we put the still frozen fish back into the freezer, threw away the salsa, noting that it didn’t freeze well, and pushed the tacos to Sunday. We’ll keep the tacos simple and just garnish them with avocado and lime juice, but we are definitely going to make Melissa d’Arabian’s Spicy Grilled Corn to go with them.

Kim got a nice surprise from her mom in the mail last week: a copy of her Great Aunt Kathryn’s recipe for gazpacho.  We’ll have that on Tuesday, along with some shrimp cooked on the grill pan, which should both make for a quick, easy dinner.

Tony was in the mood for steak this week, so he picked out a new recipe to try: Saveur Magazine’s Grilled Ginger Marinated Flank Steak. The marinade for the steak includes toasted sesame oil, lime juice, honey, garlic, and of course, ginger. These are flavors we don’t mix too often, so we’re excited to give this recipe a try. We’re debating whether to serve this with beer or to try to stump Michael at Wines by the Flask and have him come up with a wine pairing, but we’re leaning toward seeing what Michael can come up with!

On Wednesday night, we’re having “Dutch Treats”, namely, the tasty cheeses that we brought back from our trip to Amsterdam, paired with the mustards we also bought, a little dried sausage, and some fun breads we found on Fresh Direct, like raisin pecan bread. We also though it would be fun to have one of the dishes that we seemed to see on every menu on our trip: white asparagus. This is a Northern European specialty that we enjoyed very much, so we though we’d give it a try.  We’re going to use food.com’s recipe for Spargel (white asparagus with Hollandaise sauce) to help us figure out how to cook the asparagus, but rather than serve it with a heavy sauce, we’re just going to use some lemon juice and maybe a little butter.

We’re trying out a new recipe on Thursday night as well: The Kitchn’s Baked Goat Cheese with Spring Lettuce Salad. This is an interesting recipe that involves cutting the goat cheese into disks, which are marinated  in olive oil and herbs and then coated with panko bread crumbs and baked in the oven.

We’ll have dinner out on Friday and our special dinner on Saturday, for which we’ll post an entirely new menu late this week. Check back then for some ideas on how to put together a simple summertime dinner party!

Menu for the Week: Two at the Table Menu Week of June 7 2015

We had a fantastic three days at Governor’s Ball! We saw lots of great acts, like Florence + The Machine, My Morning Jacket, The Decemberists, Weird Al Yankovik, and the Black Keys, to name a few, and sampled lots of great food, including from Mighty Quinn’s BBQ, Ramen Burger, and Hot Clay Oven (Indian food).  These last two were not on our list originally, but we made some game time decisions when we got to the Ball and saw all the tasty options – and lines! We also hit all three ice cream places – Coolhaus for ice cream sandwiches, Davey’s Ice Cream for cones, and Van Leeuwwn for sundaes – all of which were fantastic.

We’re continuing the theme from last week of keeping things simple to help us manage a busy week (we are attending a lecture on Central Park at the New York Historical Society on Tuesday and Kim has a Junior League event on Wednesday and a work event on Thursday) and of using things we’ve been saving in the fridge and freezer.

With that in mind, we’re making Roasted Salmon with Dill Vinaigrette on Monday night, which will let us use the vinaigrette we made for Rachel Khoo’s Puy Lentil Salad with Goats’ Cheese, Beetroot and Dill Vinaigrette. We’re going to pair this up with a side using a new recipe, Garlic Lemon and Parmesan Oven Roasted Zucchini, which will let us use the zucchini we have in the fridge from last week.

On Tuesday night, we need something super quick, as we probably won’t get home from the lecture before 8:00. We decided to use the Short Rib Ragu that we made when we prepared our Pappardelle with Short Rib Ragu. This should save us plenty of time and will also let us use up the ragu.

Tony will be on his own both Wednesday and Thursday and decided to make sandwiches. On Wednesday, he will make a Ham and Gruyère Sandwich with Herb Mustard, which will use up some of the Gruyère we have left over from the Tomato, Chard, and Gruyère Casserole we made last week, as well as some of the herb mustard we bought in Amsterdam. On Thursday night, Tony will make a Sausage and Pepper Sandwich, which will use the sausage we have in the freezer and  a bit of onion we have left over from last week’s Greek Salad with Oregano-Roasted Salmon.

On Friday night, we’re making Fish Tacos with Tomatillo Jalapeño Salsa, which will allow us to use up the jalapeño salsa we made the last time we prepared these fish tacos. Unlike last time, however, we won’t be making Roasted Corn with Lime, Parmesan, and Chili, but rather Spicy Grilled Corn, which we’ve featured on the blog a few times before.

We’ll have dinner out Saturday night. We haven’t quite decided where, but a visit to the places whose for we tried at Governor’s Ball is not out of the question!

Tony had originally planned to make Eggs with Leeks and Mushrooms for dinner  Thursday night, but instead had some fantastic tacos from Taco Bono at Broadway Bites, a seasonal culinary pop-up market in Greeley Square Park in Herald Square. So, the eggs ended up being breakfast on Friday, which was perfect, as we were taking the day off to go to Governor’s Ball and had time to make a nice breakfast – though this dish only took about 30 minutes from start to finish. Here’s how Tony did it:

Since I was using a pan about half the size of the one suggested in the recipe (yes, I measured the pans and calculated the relative surface areas, because I am a nerd), I decided to cut the recipe in half. As things worked out, it would have been better to just make the whole recipe in the smaller pan, but more on that later.

After lining the pan with parchment paper, it only took me a few minutes to slice up about 4 ounces of mushrooms and the leek left over from the Tarragon Chicken with Fresh Herbs, as well as to strip a teaspoon of leaves off the thyme sprigs. (We really love thyme, especially with mushrooms, so there was no way I was cutting this part of the recipe in half!) I spread the mushrooms and leeks on the baking sheet, drizzled them with olive oil, sprinkled on the thyme, plus some salt and pepper, and mixed everything to coat. I then put the sheet into a 400 degree oven for 10 minutes.

After about 10 minutes, the mushrooms and leeks hadn’t browned much, so I put them back in the oven for five more minutes. In retrospect, this was not a good idea, nor was halving the recipe. What I didn’t account for was the fact that the leeks and mushrooms would reduce in size as they cooked. (To quote George Costanza from Seinfeld: “Significant shrinkage!”) Not quite the end of the world, but when it was time to make the hollows to hold the eggs, the “hollows” were looking more like “shallows” and much too small to actually hold an egg. I improvised, and pushed the edged of the mushroom/leek mixture in a bit, which mostly solved the problem. I say mostly because there was really only room of two eggs, not four. In any event, the sheet went back into the oven for eight minutes, at which point the eggs were cooked just the way we liked them – white mostly set, yolks still pretty runny.

While the dish didn’t turn out exactly as expected, it still made of an excellent breakfast. The mushrooms and thyme gave everything a nice floral/earthy note and the leeks added just the tiniest bit of bite. I served this with some sourdough toast and hot, black coffee, for a special weekday breakfast.