More Dinners For This Week

Haven't quite finished thinking this through, but a little flexibility is always good too. Here's where we're at.


We'll follow the indulgence of the grilled ribeyes with a vegetarian pasta dish, pasta with sugar snap peas, asparagus and parmesan, from Bon Appetit. This one can be played with liberally, both in methodology and ingredients. I agree with the reviewers who say that it benefits from the addition of garlic, which means switching things around so the final product comes together in a big saute pan with the oil and garlic. That opens up the possibility of cooking the veggies in the pan, and adding others as well. My preference is to cook the asparagus with the pasta, adding it when the pasta is nearly done, and cooking the snap peas either the same way, or in the saute pan with the garlic. Think I might add some wonderful braising mix to the saute pan as well, making this a real salute to spring veggies. Don't forget Sunflower has organic leaf lettuce and pesticide-free tomatoes at really good prices this week for the side salad, and asparagus is a decent price at Whole Foods.


Next, we'll want a rice-based dish, and not to be repetitive, but in the spring, I can't get enough of sausage risotto with spring greens. It's particularly apt this week, with Italian chicken sausage on sale at both Sprouts and Sunflower.


For a really quick midweek dinner, I'm looking at experimenting with the fresh Atlantic sole that Sprouts has on sale. Am not used to cooking it, but I expect it would do well as a quick saute with lots of lemon on the side, and with a microwaved "baked" potato. A side veggie could be anything nice and fresh. If I have time for something a little more ambitious, I'd like to try shaved fennel and arugula salad, ahem, minus the anchovies. This actually would be pretty quick if the dressing were made in advance, or a if bottled vinaigrette were substituted.


Since there should be some soup leftover from the weekend too, maybe we're set for the week.