Home-cooked Valentine's Day meal for your Valentine
We have stopped going out to restaurants on special days to face the crowds and standard fare prepared and served by over-worked staffs. Now our routine is to prepare a special meal at home usually of better quality and for a fraction of the cost.
This year I prepared a meal for my wife and I that was enjoyed in the comfort of our home sans the reservations and crowds.
The entire menu was made for scratch except for the Ben and Jerry's vanilla bean ice cream.
SALAD:
Red grapefruit, avocado, kalmata olives (pitted and halved) with a dressing of grapefruit juice, olio nuovo, agave syrup, salt & pepper, splash of basalmic
ENTREES:
1/ Broccolli and Carrots sauteed in butter and herbs de provience
2/ Smashed Baby New Red Potatos w/ skins lots of butter and whole heavy cream and chopped parsely
3/ Lobster Tails quick boiled with a bit of old bay then medallioned and poached in butter w/ clarified butter and seasoned clarified butter for dipping
4/ 2" thick-14oz.Filet Mignon trimmed and tied sprayed with garlic juice and coated with fresh ground black pepper all sides seared to a nice brown crust both sides and finished in the oven to medium-rare
served with a zinfandel-mushroom-cream pan sauce [shallots, garlic, herbs de provience bits strained out] served on the plate around the steak and potatos
WINE: I served a sparkling wine, a burgandy-brut, to start the meal with our toast and to sip on during the meal it matched well with the whole meal
DESSERT: Vanilla bean [ ben and jerry's ] ice cream with blackberry/blueberry coulee
It took me a half a day to prepare cook and assemble it but it was well worth the effort and having Valentine's Day on a saturday made the time involved possible and I was also home all day which my wife appreciated all-in-all it was a resounding success and very affordable compared to going out .
Please bear in mind as stated at the begining it was all from scratch except the ice cream.
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6 Comments:
We did the same thing. It's lame to go out on Valentine's day anyway, total amateur night.
We did an Italian theme..
Potato and Chorizo salad as a starter from the Ecco cookbook.
Delicious!
...and as a main, we did a Lamb Osso Bucco, loosely based on Mario Batali's Osso Bucco recipe.
Great preparation, but we wouldn't skimp next time and stick with Veal.
Lamb was half the price though.
For Dessert we did the Gina DePalma's Almond olive oil cake that was posted the other day.
Best. Cake. Ever.
I have never had greater success with a cake, and I really enjoy baking.
Seriously, everyone should make this super-easy, and incredibly delicious cake.
Another great part about dining at home, you can drink great wine without the huge mark-up, and you don't have to take a taxi home!
Silvia at 6:45PM on 02/16/09
I like this post!
We did matambre and other South-American theme side dishes, to pair with a Chilean wine.
For dessert, we made cream puffs with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce without a stand mixer. It was harder than I remembered to make choux by hand, so making it together really worked :-)
hmw0029 at 7:09PM on 02/16/09
oops I meant this topic not post
hmw0029 at 7:11PM on 02/16/09
My valentine love cooking together so it wasnt even a question what we were going to do for V-day..
We had martini's while cooking....
a great salad with homemade italian dressing,
crab legs
twice baked potatoes
and homemade chocolate elcairs... which were fantastic...
hungrygrl7 at 8:04PM on 02/16/09
We had a Local Colorado Syrah from Hermosa Vineyards- reminded me on blueberry pie..so amazing! For dinner- pan seared steak rubbed with olive oil, garlic and rosemary, Tyler Florences potatoes gratin, broccoli, and my red velvet cupcakes.
bisbee at 12:13AM on 02/17/09
Yum! Sounds like everyone had great dinners. We cooked together at home too.
Snacked on some great gruyere and olives (and wine) while cooking
had butter poached lobster, meyer lemon risotto and haricot vert for dinner
and individual molten chocolate cakes for dessert (not sure I'll ever order this one at a restaurant again -- they were fab).
jlbrach at 12:06PM on 02/17/09