Valentine's Day Dinner

We decided to stay home this year. With so many guests around the past 1-2 months we've done quite a lot of eating out. Dinner at home sounded great. It's also a great opportunity to make foods we don't normally make - either due to cost or health or convenience.

This Valentine's dinner accomplished just that. It was slightly expensive (although still much less than we'd pay if we went out) and wasn't low-fat by any stretch of the imagination and definitely was not what you call local. In fact, I'd call it the anti-100-mile meal as nearly everything was made from imported, energy-inefficient ingredients.

Such as beef, for example. Corn-fed American beef. That was the first item on our menu: grilled rib-eye steaks. Oh yes, they were delicious! I have this stove-top cast iron grill. It's the best invention! I just put it atop the gas flame on the stove and let it sizzle our meat to perfection. I highly recommend one of these if you have a gas stove top. There are non-stick versions out there that are too expensive in my opinion. Plus with non-stick you don't get as good grill marks. I was stoked when I found my cast iron one for less than $10!

My mother taught us how to make the perfect steak. The key is to let it come to room temperature before you cook it. And while it's sitting out on the counter becoming room temperature (which happens in just a few minutes in this weather), you rub it down with course salt. Just before cooking the steaks, pat them dry with a paper towel. This, with the salt, draws some of the moisture out (especially important in previously frozen steak). This prevents the moisture left in the steak from cooking the inside too fast. The whole thing cooks more evenly and you get nice charring on the outside. And always let your steak rest for 10 minutes after it cooks and before you cut into it. Otherwise, the juice will run right out of it and it will be dry. I'm telling you, it really results in a tastier steak.

The second item on our menu was wild mushroom risotto with peas and freshly grated romano cheese. Hello! In Asia, we pretty much live without mushrooms. Good, regular button mushrooms. You can't get them here because they aren't grown here. We miss them. Sure, we can get shiitake mushrooms but those don't go very nicely in Italian dishes. So we pretty much live without fresh mushrooms (sigh). So, for Valentine's day we splurged on some very expensive, imported button and portabello mushrooms. I've never made risotto before. It was delightful! So full of yummy mushroom flavor.

The third element to our meal was arugula salad with roasted bell peppers and shaved romano cheese with a simple olive oil/lemon juice/balsamic dressing. It was the first time I ever roasted bell peppers. Just cover a cookie sheet with foil and place the whole peppers under the broiler, turning often (about 20 minutes) until the skin is bubbling and burnt. Place in zip-top baggy until they are at room temperature. Remove the skin and seeds. Slice and serve. Or add a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar, salt & pepper and let marinate for at least 5 hours. I didn't do this as I roasted the peppers while I was prepping the rest of the meal but they were still super tasty. I think I'll roast peppers more often. We both loved this simple salad.

So that was our entree: grilled steak, wild mushroom risotto, and arugula and roasted peppers salad. (All three of those recipes came from Giada DeLourentiis' book called "Everyday Italian," which I got for Christmas.) We enjoyed the salad with a glass of champagne, then opened a bottle of red wine to accompany the steak and risotto.

As for dessert. I really did something I wouldn't normally do. That's the fun of it. I made molten chocolate cakes with raspberry coulis and fresh whipped cream. Remember when I said this meal wasn't at all local? The chocolate was Hershey's semi-sweet from the US, the frozen raspberries also from the US (and expensive! no wonder we never buy those) and the whipping cream from France. The cakes turned out great. The raspberry sauce was a hit with Andrey as its one of the foods he misses the most. And the whipped cream... well, if any of you really know me, you know that I have a love affair with whipped cream. I'd almost trade Andrey for it. That part was for me.

We savored the meal. And the time alone together. We realize it is a luxury that few of our married friends with kids get to enjoy - 1. To have the time to cook such a meal and 2. To enjoy it at home, just the two of us. So we choose to be thankful and to live in the moment and enjoy it for what it is, knowing that times like this are fleeting. Once kids enter the picture it will be a whole new deal. Am I right, friends?

Happy Valentine's Day