Love Dinner

Oh Valentines Day, I see you there, I've seen glimpses of things in shop windows, red, pink, candy, roses, hearts... Trying to bring some warmth to a month that is a little shorter but always feels much longer... 

I remember being in school and having to exchange valentines with everyone in the class. It always felt like a lot of work - especially since in my house we had to make all our valentines, no trip to the store to give out already made cartoon valentines - but also exciting to get all this love given to you. I've tried to keep some of those lessons with me as I've gotten older. I still make my own valentines and I see it more as a time to send them to my friends so they can feel that love instead of this focus on buying things for my partner or for most of my years trying to give out that love instead of focusing on being lonely and single. 

I work tomorrow night so decided to make a nice dinner for my partner tonight to share some love. I've been holding on to this bottle of wine. 

You can only get it from the source, in California. Usually I go for the full bodied reds especially in colder weather. And I would have continued to save this bottle for some 'special occasion' or celebration but why not instead enjoy it and celebrate today? Besides a beautiful pink with hints of strawberry does seem to say love... 

I also wanted the meal to be about us, how we and our love can grow and becomes something stronger, more beautiful, so not just using this wine that came from the vineyard where the wine we had at our wedding was from but also using some of the foods that we'd grown over the summer. We had lots of basil that I'd frozen because we couldn't use it fast enough and it gives a taste of summer in the winter. We also grew heirloom beans. Again, I'd been 'saving' them for something special... I cooked the beans as inspired by the basic Rancho Gordo cooking instructions. I had some pumpkin ravioli from a local shop. I sautéed broccoli rate with some garlic and added a bunch of the frozen basil and cherry tomatoes from our farm share to have on top of the pasta. 

And a little chocolate for desert... which I prepared earlier in the day and refrigerated, then removed from the fridge right before dinner so they could warm to room temperature and then be cooked after dinner

I adapted a recipe for molten chocolate cakes which ended up making 3 ramekins 

4 ounces semi sweet chocolate (could use bittersweet but semi was what I had)

3/4 stick of butter

3 eggs

3 tablespoons granulated sugar

2 teaspoons of flour

Melt chocolate and butter on the stove, remove from heat

Mix the eggs and sugar, add in chocolate and butter and mix well, add flour

grease and sugar ramekins then divide batter into them 

bake at 425 for 12-15 minutes 

Since I was proposed to in Argentina we have a fond connection to dulce de leche so I bought dulce to leche gelato. Once the cakes were cooked I turned them out into bowls and topped with the gelato. I also made a strawberry sauce with strawberries from our farm share and to tie the flavors of the wine back into the desert. I had put the cut strawberries in a small pan over low hear with kirschwasser (cherry brandy) a dash of almond extract and about a teaspoon of sugar and a dash of salt. I let that simmer and reduce. 

It was a lovely, tasty evening.