INTRODUCTION
You’ve finished work, you’re heading home, and you suddenly realize you haven’t given a lick of thought to dinner. There are a few wilting greens and a piece of leftover chicken in the fridge, and no time to shop. Plus you have to help the kids with their homework and do the laundry. Your thoughts turn dark; this is a place you find yourself all too often.
We’ve been there, too.
Because of what we do, people always ask us, “You must cook all the time, right?”
“Well, no,” we say, “we actually do most of our cooking on the weekend.”
As parents and as partners running a growing business, we have very little time to cook during the week. If we want to eat well, we need to plan our shopping and cooking for the weekends, and to come up with ways to do it so that family dinners don’t become monotonous.
It took us years, working separately, to figure out how to pull this off. There were mistakes. There was take-out pizza. But over time, the small triumphs and the wisdom of experience began to add up. And once we began working on this book, the insights and tips started flowing at a rapid-fire pace, and the pieces came together very quickly. We were onto something, and we could help others.
Here’s how we got started.
AMANDA: After my twins were born, I would shop at the Greenmarket on Saturdays and buy whatever looked best. On Sundays, I’d cook all the ingredients simply, with a plan to combine them in enticing ways throughout the week. The problem with this was…well, there were several. Cooks in a hurry gravitate toward the path of least resistance—so I was roasting everything. Combining all the roasted fish and beets in a sparklingly original way on a Tuesday night happened pretty much never. Several months in, I realized that not only was I bored, but that I had gotten myself into a deep, depressing cooking rut. What saved me were recipes—I turned the clock back two decades and started following other people’s recipes again.
Recipes are a relief when you’re busy and not feeling inspired to create. Follow directions and a destination is yours. And recipes, which allow you entry into another creative person’s mind, reinvigorated my love of cooking. I was learning again, and the results were surprising and delicious. The only problem? Stand-alone recipes feed you well for a night, but not for a week.
Eventually, I began tying together recipes to form a menu that would carry me through the week. And I started involving my husband, Tad, more in our weekly menu prep, creating a time and space for us to chitchat while we cooked.
MERRILL: I’m newer to the idea of planning meals ahead. It wasn’t too long ago that I was still swinging by the grocery store on my way home from work to pick up a whole chicken, some fresh pasta, or whatever looked best for my husband, Jonathan, and me to have that night. Steak au poivre on a Wednesday? You bet. With mashed potatoes and sautéed greens on the side—all served promptly at 10 p.m.
But then baby Clara arrived, followed by Henry three years later, and everything changed. No more eating at 10 p.m. Impromptu dinners became a thing of the past (or at least reserved for weekends), and suddenly the sheer volume of food necessary to get us all through the week became intimidating.
Although I’d never fully drifted away from recipes as inspiration, I started turning to a different breed: recipes that could bear the burden of being stretched and poked and prodded to adapt to different seasons, ingredients, cooking methods, and yields. I began cooking several recipes each weekend with an eye toward efficiency, always on the lookout for winning combinations and permutations.
AMANDA: We approached our weekly menus with our own tics—er, style. Merrill would have loose notes scattered here and there and menus that produced mix-and-match leftovers for work lunches, such as braised chicken and brothy beans. I secretly pined for her lunches and took mental notes on her ideas.
MERRILL: Amanda opted for meticulously handwritten weekly menus and Sunday cooking plans (she’s a Virgo), which gave birth to inspired wheat berry and quinoa salads and brussels sprouts with anchovy dressing.
AMANDA: Over our desk lunches or while walking to meetings, we’d talk about what we were cooking and trade tips and recipes—such as Merrill’s tip to roast pork shoulder overnight. Soon, we could see ourselves influencing each other.
We realized there was a flywheel effect happening, with a coherent world view on dinner planning arising from our complex lives. Finally—duh!—it occurred to us that this was the book we should write together. Because it was a topic we cared about deeply, and because so many other people struggle with the same challenge.
We learned from our own failures that the biggest obstacle to eating well isn’t the cooking, it’s the organizing. That’s why we arranged our book by season and menu and layered it with tactical tips and instructions. This new way to dinner will change the flow of your weeks and improve your life. Gone will be that nagging to-do anxiety about what you’ll put together for dinner after work. When you get home, you’ll know what needs to be done, and you’ll have more time with the people you love. You’ll sit down to dinners that are varied and good for you. You’ll save money on groceries and waste less food. You’ll become a faster and better cook while cooking this way. And if you follow every step in this book, you, too, will have two children, run a start-up, and live in Brooklyn.
We’ll be with you the whole way—join us!
—Amanda and Merrill
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
At first glance, our book may seem daunting. It really is a new way to dinner, and this new way may mean altering your shopping and cooking habits. To cook for the week, you’ll need to decide on your menu and plan a big shop so you’re ready to get in the kitchen over the weekend.
Our plan may take some of the spontaneity out of your cooking, but we feel the benefits far outweigh this. You’ll start each week feeling organized and on top of your game. You’ll have a detailed plan for five dinners (and many lunches) that anyone can execute, so in case you have to stay late at work or travel, your partner or sitter can take over, and no one’s schedules will be compromised.
Most important, you’ll head into the week knowing that you’ll eat well. There will be a little last-minute prep or cooking some nights—and a lot more time to spend with your friends and family.
A few important points to keep in mind before trying out your first menu:
• When you’re first starting out, our menus will probably take longer than the stated cooking time. These are new recipes and our multitasking cooking plan may not come naturally. All our menus were tested and timed by people on our team, so we know they work. Don’t be concerned if your timing is slower—once you get the hang of our approach to weekend cooking, it’ll come easily to you as well.
• Cooking times represent the active time you spend in the kitchen. Occasionally, you’ll be done with your active work time, but a braise or a cake may take an hour or so longer before you remove it from the oven.
• Cooking times also represent the time it would take for one person to complete the menu. If you have someone to help you out, your time in the kitchen should be substantially shorter.
• We haven’t accounted for washing dishes or cleanup time, because every cook has his or her own approach. It’s helpful to use the “clean as you go” method and wash dishes between recipes or steps. It will make you happier if you finish a menu without having a mountain of dishes to deal with.
• We give you a weekend plan for cooking ahead in one fell swoop, but feel free to spread out the cooking over a couple of days and make it work for you. For instance, make the dessert on Saturday morning and a stew in the evening, then use Sunday to wrap up the smaller recipes. We ourselves don’t manage to cook in one sustained burst every week—sometimes our weekend cooking seeps into Monday, or we end up ordering pizza on a night we’d planned to cook. We don’t feel guilty about it, nor should you!
• Think of the full menus in the book as Perfect World Menus; they’re meant for when you’re really in the mind-set to cook and are going to be home for all of the weeknights. They are an ideal that we, too, aspire to, but don’t always manage. That’s why we offer shortcuts for every menu—ideas on which recipes you can save for another week when you have more time.
• Similarly, if you’re only going to be home for a night or two in a week, just make part of a menu.
• You’ll notice that the weekend cooking plans will leave you with different configurations of food. Some weeks, you’ll have several dishes fully prepared and ready to reheat and serve. Others, you may end up with a collection of stand-alone elements ready to act as building blocks for some light weeknight cooking.
• Our menus are designed to feed a family of four and can usually be scaled up or down to fit your needs (scale down either by halving an individual recipe or by cutting out a dish or two).
• We organized the book seasonally (with an East Coast point of view) so you can take advantage of the best ingredients of each season. This is how we cook—we let the farmers’ market guide us, and that’s often the first place we start when coming up with a new menu. Please feel free to adjust based on your location.
• If you’re concerned about any dishes going bad before you get to eat them, not to worry: We’ve designed our menus to eliminate this problem. Each plan makes a bounty of food, and if you’re not feeding a lot of mouths, you can stock up for another week by sticking some of the prepared dishes in the freezer.
• We’ve noted which recipes are great for freezing and have given you storage times and tips for everything we could think of.
• We don’t call for any esoteric tools or equipment (no spiralizers in this book!), but some menus require multiple large pots and pans. If you don’t want to invest in more cookware, borrow from a friend or spread your cooking over a couple of days so you can wash and reuse the same equipment.
• Storage containers—yep, you’ll need a lot. Because so many recipes and components are stored until the dinner for which they’re needed, your Tupperware drawer and canning jars will get a good workout.
• As we wrote the book, we realized that there were a few staple recipes that should be highlighted in special sections, for easy reference if you decide to freestyle off menu. Thus our sections on salad dressings, Friday night pastas, and dishes you can freeze ahead for winter.
• Mini recipes are either easy basics or simple dishes that build on fuller recipes you’ve already made for a menu—much like a verbal recipe you might get from a friend. Minis are less detailed, and we thought you’d enjoy the break from conventional recipes now and then. You’ll find mini recipes and tips throughout that aren’t included in the nightly menu plans. Think of these as bonuses—and further inspiration for creating your own menus!
• We included grocery lists to save you time—so the work of going through all the ingredient lists in a menu is done for you. We hope it’s helpful! If you want to do a shortcut plan, don’t forget to make adjustments to your grocery shopping.
KITCHEN CONFIDENCE
We’ve learned a lot from cooking many menus throughout the years, including tricks for storing food efficiently, time-saving tips, and how to keep fresh ingredients at their peak for as long as possible. Here are some of the bits of kitchen wisdom we find ourselves relying on most.
Storing Fresh Ingredients.
Use some of your weekend cooking time to wash all of your herbs and greens for the week. Dry them thoroughly and store them in the fridge in zipper plastic bags lined with paper towels. Amanda presses out all of the air and seals the bags, while Merrill leaves them open at the top. We tested both methods in the Food52 kitchen to see which kept the greens longer, and after five days it was a draw: Both were still going strong, so the choice is yours!
To cut down on waste, wash and reuse 1-gallon zipper bags or recycle clean plastic grocery bags to store greens and other raw prepared vegetables. You can also keep washed salad greens right in the salad spinner (add a few paper towels to absorb any excess moisture) if you have room in your fridge—not likely in our kitchens!
Keep lemons and garlic in light linen bags (or plastic bags lined with paper towels) in a vegetable drawer. Onions, potatoes, and fruits besides berries (like apples, peaches, melons, and so on) hold up well on the counter. Spread them on large platters so little stacking is required.
Store ripe bananas and avocados on the counter (hang bananas if possible), away from other produce. This will help keep them from going brown.
Crusty breads with a delicate crumb (like baguettes) are best the same day you buy them. But if you don’t regularly have access to fresh bread, freezing some until you need it is a great alternative. Simply wrap the loaf (you may want to cut it in half crosswise if it’s long) tightly in plastic wrap, then in aluminum foil, and freeze. When you’re ready to use it, thaw the bread on the counter for an hour or so, then put it (uncovered) in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 5 minutes to revive the crust.
Storing Cooked Food.
If you blanch or cook vegetables like sugar snaps, asparagus, or green beans before you plan to serve them, store them separately in the fridge in paper towel–lined containers or bags. Make sure to use them within a couple of days; wait much longer, and they will have lost most of their crunch.
As you use up food throughout the week, transfer things to smaller containers. By the end of the week, your fridge will be a lot emptier, making it easier for you to do a good cleanup and purge anything past its prime (it’s harder for that bag of wilting greens to hide in an uncluttered crisper).
Whenever possible, refrigerate dishes like stews, braises, baked pastas, and pilafs right in the pan they were cooked in. You’ll cut down on dishes, and it makes reheating simple.
You’ll see that we call for shaking up most of our salad dressings in a jar. It’s the easiest way to emulsify the ingredients, and then you’re left with both a handy storage container and one step to re-emulsify the leftovers.
Reheating.
If you’re using the oven to reheat cooked foods, most things do well within a range of 250°F to 300°F (120°C to 150°C). If you’re trying to reheat something like biscuits or a galette, you’ll want to crank up the oven closer to 350°F (175°C) or even 375°F (190°C).
Warm dishes like braises, stews, and baked rice in the oven, covered, at 250°F to 300°F (120°C to 150°C) for 15 to 30 minutes, until heated through. These also typically do well in the microwave: Put the food in a microwave-safe dish, cover with a damp kitchen or paper towel, and heat just to temperature. (Being overzealous with the microwave is a surefire way to ensure a rubbery dinner.)
Reheat sturdier dishes like roasted vegetables and meat in the oven, tented loosely with aluminum foil so they don’t steam. If you’re reheating meat that has already been sliced (like the pork roasts in Overnight Roast Pork and Slow-Cooked Pork Tacos), dampen the slices with gravy or sauce first to keep them from drying out. Never reheat meat that you’d like to remain pink (like the Steak with Arugula, Lemon, and Parmesan). You’ll be much happier if you let it sit out for half an hour before dinner and then serve it at room temperature with warm sides.
Always cover fish to reheat it, in a very gentle (250°F/120°C) oven or in the microwave. (An exception is the oven roasted fish, which you cook partially over the weekend and then broil quickly before serving.)
Set chilled desserts (like puddings) and cheeses out to come to room temperature before dinner. Soften hard ice cream at room temperature for a few minutes to make it easier to scoop.
It’s always important to season food to taste, but especially so when reheating and reworking leftovers. A stew that seemed perfectly seasoned when you took it off the stove may need another pinch of salt after a day in the fridge. Taste what you’re serving once you’ve reheated it and then adjust the seasonings.
Freezing.
Although some foods will last longer if they’re well wrapped, a good general rule is to limit freezing time to six months or less. Otherwise, you’re risking freezer burn.
Make sure to clearly label and date anything you freeze. You may think you’ll remember which container you put the homemade chicken stock in, but you probably won’t. And frozen chicken stock looks a lot like frozen egg whites.
To freeze small things you’d like to keep from clumping together—like cooked chickpeas, gnocchi, or fresh berries—spread them out in a single layer on rimmed baking sheets and freeze until hard, then transfer them into bags or containers. They won’t stick together, and you’ll be able to easily remove only what you need.
Freeze pesto in ice cube trays, then pop out the cubes and store in a bag. Freeze tomato sauce, soups, and stews in two-person portions. This way, you can defrost the right amount for however many people you’re feeding.
Anytime you juice a lemon or lime, zest it first. Keep the zest in an airtight container or bag and store it in the freezer for another day. Use frozen zest as you would fresh—it thaws almost instantly.
We’ve tried not to call for a handful of fresh cilantro or parsley leaves without a recommendation for how to use up the rest. If you do end up with leftover herbs, whiz them up into a pesto or green sauce and freeze as noted earlier.
If you end up with just a sprig or two of herbs, the top of an onion, a nub of carrot, or some clean vegetable shavings, add them to a scraps bag in the freezer. The next time you make stock, toss in whatever is in the bag, straight from the freezer; your stock will thank you.
Cleanup.
Make sure your dishwasher is cleaned and emptied before you start cooking, so you can fill it up without interruption.
If you have a two-compartment sink, keep one filled with hot, soapy dishwater for washing on the fly and use the other for rinsing off dishes. Don’t put dirty dishes directly into the soapy water or the water will get greasy very quickly, and you won’t get clean dishes.
Spread a kitchen towel on the counter by your sink for drying washed greens and herbs.
Things to Have on Hand.
As you’ll see in our menus, we often rely on staples from the pantry, fridge, and freezer to round out a meal. These are things that require little to no preparation and allow you some freedom from the constraint of having already planned every meal at the start of the week. They can help you stretch a menu, or whip up something else if the meal for that night doesn’t work for you. Here are some of our workhorses:
• Eggs
• Avocado
• Greek yogurt
• Ricotta
• Good cheese
• Hummus
• Canned beans and chickpeas
• Cured meats
• Bacon
• Sausage
• Good-quality canned fish (tuna, sardines, anchovies)
• Olives
• Pickles
• Bread
• Crackers
• Pasta
• Hunk of Parmesan
• Rice
• Fresh fruit
• Dried fruit
• Nut butters
• Nuts
• Good chocolate
• Ice cream
• Cookies
