From the Vault: Weeknight Dinner Menus
When I started Urban Home Blog, one of the first areas of content to solidify was Weeknight Dinner. With this feature, which with a few exceptions publishes monthly, I publish a recipe for making dinner at home one night during the work week. The core of Weeknight Dinner is classic American cooking (look for the Grandma's Kitchen tag), but Weeknight Dinners come from a spectrum of cooking influences.
One of the interesting things about reading -- and writing -- about food is learning the stories that dishes bring with them to the table. Dishes have not just history but a variety of cultural relevancies, and these manifest literally on the plate. Cuisines begin with the fundamental need to eat and the action that ancestors in a region took to find food and prepare it. The wildlife in the area, the plants and grains become ingredients. With practice, ingredients and technique become dishes, and the dishes take on cultural relevance that circles back to cuisine.
Cuisine is a context and a practice, but dishes come alive in individual kitchens and achieve personal relevancy in dining rooms. Something as simple as preparing a dish makes a dish the cook's own. If the people the cook is feeding like what they're eating, then the dish becomes part of a cook's repertoire and that in turn becomes a part of family history. We all have such memories, and when you start thinking of them you almost can't stop. I have heard from readers who wax nostalgic over everything from the raisin cake that always seemed to be waiting on their grandmother's kitchen counter to the way their dad prepared their peanut butter sandwich before sending them off to school. I try to introduce each Weeknight Dinner to give a sense of the cultural and personal relevance of the dish, because I believe that knowing something beyond technique about what you're cooking is the essence of Weeknight Dinner. Setting time aside to prepare and share a meal is a way of sanctifying those moments of being together.
I'm honored to report that Urban Home Blog does indeed have readers, and if I read my email and the commentary aright, along with thought pieces like Haunted Houses and Witches and nostalgia pieces like Better Homes and Gardens Sewing Book, your favorite columns are Weeknight Dinners. Speaking -- actually, writing -- purely as a web geek for a moment, my analytics inform me that the word "recipe" is the term most associated with my name as a writer. (Interestingly, it is a name I share with a writer who, as I understand it, covered a kerfluffle in Santa Cruz, California and one [or one and the same; I don't know] who writes about tobacco. For writers as for everyone, it's a small world).
In each Weeknight Dinner I try to include suggestions for side dishes, desserts and and/or wine pairings for the dish. Last month, I tried a new approach of publishing the elements of a meal as three separate columns -- a maneuver that readers responded to favorably (thank you). There are areas for side dishes and desserts and numerous other categories of things to eat and drink at Urban Home, but until last month one thing I hadn't done was group columns into menus.
Planning a menu seems like a more daunting task than it actually is. Home Ec courses in the American classroom used to break it down quite simply: a dinner menu was meat, poultry or fish accompanied by a vegetable and a starch. You can easily see that the influence of this style of designing a meal remains pervasive. You cannot sit down to a blue plate special in a diner without being asked which hot vegetable you want on the plate and to choose between potatoes or rice. There's nothing wrong with this approach, but it's not the only way to think about it.
Aside from nutrition, the fundamental skill involved in designing a menu is knowing what the dish evokes and what corresponds to that experience. Take last month’s Steak Diane dinner as an example. This is a lush, special dish, and that was the point. A night at the steakhouse is a celebration, and there’s no reason dinner at home shouldn’t also be. We complimented Steak Diane’s refined, luxurious quality with dishes reflective of the steakhouse experience. Thus lucky eaters got an evening meal of Steak Diane, gratin dauphinoise and an iceberg lettuce wedge with blue cheese dressing.
Here are some menu ideas, culled from the sixty-plus-and-counting recipes published so far at Urban Home Blog. As you will see, the recipes at Urban Home are flexible -- most of them work together. As I continue to publish Weeknight Dinners, I will continue to suggest menus with dishes from both within Urban Home and outside of it, but here are some ideas to get you started.
You can make a simple, satisfying dinner with fig and prosciutto pizza and fennel salad. Fennel salad also harmonizes nicely with pork tenderloin with apples and thyme, as do Greek green beans and cream cheese and chive biscuits. Those biscuits also harmonize with Carbonnade. For any of these, open a jar of giardiniera to serve with drinks before dinner.
For a Native American dinner, pair cedar-planked salmon with potatoes and olive relish with either sautéed summer squash or succotash. For a quintessential American dinner, make a big pot of New England clam chowder. For either, break open some cranberry sauce and serve it on a slice of cranberry nut bread for dessert.
Insalata mista is a natural pairing with pasta with sausage and peppers or penne alla vodka, but try it with chicken dishes such as Parmesan-crusted chicken breasts, chicken and pesto or chicken ragout with white beans and rosemary. For a simple supper, pair it with capellini with lemon and capers. For any of these, prepare a panna cotta for dessert.
Few luxuries equal having breakfast for dinner. Try either a French-inspired omelette with goat cheese and sun-dried tomato or a retro California omelet plate. If you're really serving your omelet California style, put a bowl of fruit salad on the table. For a true indulgence, whip up a batch of pancakes (though if you serve them with hot coffee, be prepared to watch the late show all night).
That iceberg wedge that we served with our Steak Diane would nicely compliment London Broil with horseradish cream, but so would either martini fondue or mashed potatoes topped with a medallion of compound butter. Build a pitcher of Bloody Marys or a shaker of martinis, and have a lemon pound cake or a chocolate hazelnut tart ready for dessert.
One of the interesting things about reading -- and writing -- about food is learning the stories that dishes bring with them to the table. Dishes have not just history but a variety of cultural relevancies, and these manifest literally on the plate. Cuisines begin with the fundamental need to eat and the action that ancestors in a region took to find food and prepare it. The wildlife in the area, the plants and grains become ingredients. With practice, ingredients and technique become dishes, and the dishes take on cultural relevance that circles back to cuisine.
Cuisine is a context and a practice, but dishes come alive in individual kitchens and achieve personal relevancy in dining rooms. Something as simple as preparing a dish makes a dish the cook's own. If the people the cook is feeding like what they're eating, then the dish becomes part of a cook's repertoire and that in turn becomes a part of family history. We all have such memories, and when you start thinking of them you almost can't stop. I have heard from readers who wax nostalgic over everything from the raisin cake that always seemed to be waiting on their grandmother's kitchen counter to the way their dad prepared their peanut butter sandwich before sending them off to school. I try to introduce each Weeknight Dinner to give a sense of the cultural and personal relevance of the dish, because I believe that knowing something beyond technique about what you're cooking is the essence of Weeknight Dinner. Setting time aside to prepare and share a meal is a way of sanctifying those moments of being together.
I'm honored to report that Urban Home Blog does indeed have readers, and if I read my email and the commentary aright, along with thought pieces like Haunted Houses and Witches and nostalgia pieces like Better Homes and Gardens Sewing Book, your favorite columns are Weeknight Dinners. Speaking -- actually, writing -- purely as a web geek for a moment, my analytics inform me that the word "recipe" is the term most associated with my name as a writer. (Interestingly, it is a name I share with a writer who, as I understand it, covered a kerfluffle in Santa Cruz, California and one [or one and the same; I don't know] who writes about tobacco. For writers as for everyone, it's a small world).
In each Weeknight Dinner I try to include suggestions for side dishes, desserts and and/or wine pairings for the dish. Last month, I tried a new approach of publishing the elements of a meal as three separate columns -- a maneuver that readers responded to favorably (thank you). There are areas for side dishes and desserts and numerous other categories of things to eat and drink at Urban Home, but until last month one thing I hadn't done was group columns into menus.
Planning a menu seems like a more daunting task than it actually is. Home Ec courses in the American classroom used to break it down quite simply: a dinner menu was meat, poultry or fish accompanied by a vegetable and a starch. You can easily see that the influence of this style of designing a meal remains pervasive. You cannot sit down to a blue plate special in a diner without being asked which hot vegetable you want on the plate and to choose between potatoes or rice. There's nothing wrong with this approach, but it's not the only way to think about it.
Aside from nutrition, the fundamental skill involved in designing a menu is knowing what the dish evokes and what corresponds to that experience. Take last month’s Steak Diane dinner as an example. This is a lush, special dish, and that was the point. A night at the steakhouse is a celebration, and there’s no reason dinner at home shouldn’t also be. We complimented Steak Diane’s refined, luxurious quality with dishes reflective of the steakhouse experience. Thus lucky eaters got an evening meal of Steak Diane, gratin dauphinoise and an iceberg lettuce wedge with blue cheese dressing.
Here are some menu ideas, culled from the sixty-plus-and-counting recipes published so far at Urban Home Blog. As you will see, the recipes at Urban Home are flexible -- most of them work together. As I continue to publish Weeknight Dinners, I will continue to suggest menus with dishes from both within Urban Home and outside of it, but here are some ideas to get you started.
You can make a simple, satisfying dinner with fig and prosciutto pizza and fennel salad. Fennel salad also harmonizes nicely with pork tenderloin with apples and thyme, as do Greek green beans and cream cheese and chive biscuits. Those biscuits also harmonize with Carbonnade. For any of these, open a jar of giardiniera to serve with drinks before dinner.
For a Native American dinner, pair cedar-planked salmon with potatoes and olive relish with either sautéed summer squash or succotash. For a quintessential American dinner, make a big pot of New England clam chowder. For either, break open some cranberry sauce and serve it on a slice of cranberry nut bread for dessert.
Insalata mista is a natural pairing with pasta with sausage and peppers or penne alla vodka, but try it with chicken dishes such as Parmesan-crusted chicken breasts, chicken and pesto or chicken ragout with white beans and rosemary. For a simple supper, pair it with capellini with lemon and capers. For any of these, prepare a panna cotta for dessert.
Few luxuries equal having breakfast for dinner. Try either a French-inspired omelette with goat cheese and sun-dried tomato or a retro California omelet plate. If you're really serving your omelet California style, put a bowl of fruit salad on the table. For a true indulgence, whip up a batch of pancakes (though if you serve them with hot coffee, be prepared to watch the late show all night).
That iceberg wedge that we served with our Steak Diane would nicely compliment London Broil with horseradish cream, but so would either martini fondue or mashed potatoes topped with a medallion of compound butter. Build a pitcher of Bloody Marys or a shaker of martinis, and have a lemon pound cake or a chocolate hazelnut tart ready for dessert.
Serve sake martinis while the rice is steaming for salmon teriyaki, and don’t forget the green tea ice cream for dessert. Green chile cheeseburgers go down well with gazpacho and a Snakebite. And risotto with mushrooms pairs nicely with both insalata mista and a glass of chardonnay. Or serve that glass of white with a main-dish Cobb salad.
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