Tag: 240208

How to impress with fancy eats, cozy eats and a decadent dessert

Generally speaking, as a grownup on Valentine’s Day, you have four paths open to you:

(1) Sitting alone on your couch, in the dark, eating ice cream and watching kung fu movies. This will seem very familiar, as this was probably how you spent New Year’s Eve a few weeks ago.

(2) If you are young, enthusiastic and employed, there are Champagne, jewelry and optimistically intimate undergarments. These are grand, romantic gestures. They are undeniably effective, but also set expectations for the evening uncomfortably high, and at the same time make you look bad on the next gift-giving holiday, when you aren’t so demonstrative. It’s a risk.

(3) If you are older, and somewhat trampled upon by Life, there is the panicked last-minute purchase of traditional gestures of romance — grocery store roses ($15), a heart-shaped box of chocolates from the drug store ($25 for a big one), or getting a heart tattooed on your butt, with your loved one’s name on it (around $150, plus tip).

(4) Or, if you have been with your loved one for a while, a greeting card and dinner. This has some advantages:

(a) Nobody expects anything profound on a card. You can buy a generically romantic or even blank one, then look up a poem on the internet and copy a couple of stanzas into the card. Don’t try to take credit for good poetry. Cite your source, and you’ll look classy. Alternatively, you can try to be funny. Your joke might not go over, but you will still get points for trying, even if you’ve drawn a zombie holding a bouquet of dead roses, with a caption that says, “I love you for your brain.”

(b) Dinner is a winning strategy; we all like food. Even if you’ve been arguing with your loved one and things have been a little tense, we all have to eat sometime, and your sincere cooking gesture will not go unappreciated.

So if you’ve decided to cook a Valentine’s Day dinner, again, you have a few different approaches.

A FANCY DINNER

As Valentine’s Day cooking goes, this is a big swing. If you pull it off, you will look confident and accomplished. If you and your dining companion are still getting to know one another, this will hint that you have hidden depths.

Even if things go spectacularly wrong — even if there are billows of smoke from the kitchen, even if the dog races through the living room with your main course in his mouth, even if you injure yourself dramatically in some way — you can smile gamely, wipe a tear from the corner of your eye, and ask, “How do you feel about pizza?” You will still come out ahead.

You want to cook something that is legitimately delicious, grown up, and impressive, but not actually very hard to make.

Steak

If your Valentine is a fan of red meat, this is the time to double down on a really good piece of beef. Here’s the recipe for a truly excellent steak:

Go to a real butcher. Describe how you’d like your evening to go. He or she will show you some steaks. To you, they will look like most of the meat in the case. Trust the professional. Say, “Yes, please,” then ask them how to cook it. They know meat better than you ever will. Write down their directions, go home, and do what they told you to do.

This will be a Very Good Steak.

Chicken

If you are a strong and confident cook, roast a whole chicken. Stuff the cavity with lemon quarters and thyme, and baste it with olive oil and garlic.

If you aren’t quite that confident, your best bet is Chicken Piccata.

Chicken Piccata

2 skinless and boneless chicken breasts, butterflied and then cut in half –you can buy them this way at the grocery store

coarse salt and freshly ground pepper

all-purpose flour, for coating

6 Tablespoons (¾ stick) butter

5 Tablespoons (3 big glugs) olive oil

⅓ cup (75 grams) fresh squeezed lemon juice

½ cup (113 g) chicken stock

¼ cup (55 g) brined capers, rinsed

chopped parsley for garnish

Season the chicken breasts with salt and pepper. Coat them with flour, dusting off the excess.

Fry the chicken over medium heat in 4 tablespoons of the butter and the olive oil, until both sides are golden brown, about three minutes per side. Remove the chicken and set aside.

Add the lemon juice, chicken stock and capers to the pan and bring to a boil, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan to get all the little bits of fried chicken — if you want to impress people, call this fond — and incorporate it into the sauce.

Return the chicken to the pan and give it a brief spa day in the sauce, five minutes or so.

Remove the chicken again. At this point it is probably getting confused and a little frustrated, trying to figure out what you want from it. Plate it with your apologies.

Add the last 2 tablespoons of butter to the sauce and whisk it vigorously, like it owes you money. Again, if you want to use a fancy cooking term, this is called mounting the sauce. If you tried to work that term into a joke later on, who could blame you? If you whisk briskly enough that your sauce doesn’t break, you’ll probably get away with making a mounting joke.

Pour the sauce — the piccata sauce — over the chicken, and top with the chopped parsley. Congratulations, you’ve made Chicken Piccata.

This is delicious. It is a classic but went out of style 20 or 30 years ago, so there’s a good chance your dining companion hasn’t heard of this before. The acid from the lemon juice plays off the bright, salty flavor of the capers. This would be a bit too sharp, but the butter has rounded off the edges and given the sauce a richness that complements the chicken. The effort-to-deliciousness ratio of this dish is excellent.

Vegetarian

Your best bet here is an omelet or roasted portabella mushrooms. The mushrooms will have a rich flavor and a meaty texture. The eggs are dependably delicious and look good on the plate. If you mess them up it will only take a couple of minutes to redo them.

Grilled Asparagus

Some people find asparagus intimidating. Cooked properly it is probably the easiest vegetable to cook. It looks good on the plate. It tastes good and establishes your grown-up credentials.

Buy a bunch of baby asparagus, the pencil-thin ones.

Rinse the stalks, then break off the woody base of each spear. Bend it like you are going to break it in half. Surprisingly, it won’t actually break halfway across the spear, but toward the end, where it starts to get woody.

Soak the stalks in bottled balsamic vinaigrette for about an hour.

Spread the asparagus on a baking sheet, then broil it in the oven under high heat for about four minutes, until it looks cooked and the vinaigrette looks foamy.

That’s it. It is incredibly easy. The asparagus actually tastes like something, unlike when you were a child and one of your relatives boiled it for an hour or so. This is a sophisticated side dish.

Your Starch

Two straightforward side dishes are mashed potatoes and couscous.

The secret to excellent mashed potatoes is boiling the potatoes until they start to fall apart. Drain them, then return them to the pot and stir them to dry them out. They will continue to fall apart. When they look dry — well, drier — mash them with a potato masher, then add a truly injudicious amount of butter and cream. Season it, and again you look like a pro. If nothing else goes right tonight, good mashed potatoes will save you.

On the other hand, there’s couscous. It looks like rice. It’s faster and easier than rice. It’s not rice. Mix dry couscous with an equal amount of boiling water or broth and a little butter. Cover it and leave it alone for seven minutes. Stir it with a fork and boom, you’ve cooked couscous, baby!

A COMFORT FOOD DINNER

Valentine’s Day comfort tastes delicious, is bad for you and doesn’t have to be paired with anything. However, here are some notes.

Grilled Cheese Sandwich

Don’t believe what anybody has told you: Do not spread mayonnaise on the bread instead of butter. No, it is not “just as good.” Try to remember to leave butter out in the morning to soften up. Make sure you thoroughly butter each exterior side of the sandwich before you grill it in a pan. Fancy cheese doesn’t make for a better grilled cheese. Don’t let anyone shame you out of using American, if that’s how you roll. Cheddar or pepper jack are always good. Edam is about as fancy as you want to go. Serve your sandwich with a crunchy pickle.

Tater Tots

Don’t try to save time or energy by using your air fryer. That’s fine 364 days a year, but on Valentine’s Day, actually bake your Tater Tots in the oven. Cook them on a wire cooling rack that you’ve placed inside a baking sheet. This will let the hot air get to all sides of the Tots, and you won’t have to flip them halfway through cooking.

Toasted Ravioli or Pierogi

Don’t worry about thawing or pre-cooking them. Fry them — frozen — in butter over medium-low heat. By the time they are golden brown on both sides, the insides will be warm and creamy. If you’re making pierogi, spend 20 minutes beforehand and caramelize some onions to go with them.

Buttered Noodles

Follow the instructions on the box. Boil the pasta for that long; don’t depend on your memory. Drain it and add real, full-fat, salted butter. I recommend radiatori, but you know what kind of noodle your loved one likes. If you don’t, you need to do some hard thinking about your place in the World.

A DECADENT DESSERT

Maybe you want to make some kind of romantic gesture but you’d really rather not make a huge production out of it. There is a middle ground: a decadent dessert — something rich and chocolatey. You want it to be a celebration, just not with trumpets and confetti — maybe something you can share with the lights low and the music romantic.

Ultra-Rich Brownies with Malted Ice Cream & Homemade Chocolate Sauce

The Brownies

6 ounces (1½ of the big bars you find at the supermarket) 99 percent dark or unsweetened chocolate, broken up

18 Tablespoons (2¼ sticks) butter

4 eggs

2½ cups (495 g) sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon salt

1¾ cups (210 g) all-purpose flour

Preheat the oven to 350ºF.

Butter a 9”x 9” baking pan, and line it with parchment paper.

Melt the chocolate and butter together in the microwave. Heat them in a plastic or glass bowl for 30 seconds, stir, then microwave them for another 20 or 30 seconds, stir, then another 15 or so, until they have melted and combined. Set aside.

With an electric beater or in a stand mixer, beat the eggs, sugar, vanilla and salt at high speed for three minutes, until the mixture is extremely light and creamy. There isn’t any leavener in this recipe, so the air you beat in now will do any raising these brownies get.

Turn down the speed on your mixer, and blend in the chocolate mixture. Wish it luck and Godspeed. Salute it, if you feel so inclined.

At very slow speed, add the flour, a couple of spoonfuls at a time. More flour or a higher speed will cover you with flour.

When the flour is completely mixed in, stop the mixer. Stir the mixture once or twice with a rubber spatula to make sure everything gets combined thoroughly, then pour the batter into your prepared pan.

Bake for 45 to 55 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.

Set aside to cool.

The Ice Cream

Plain, store-bought vanilla ice cream is just about perfect for this dish. If you wanted to go a step further — make a semi-grand gesture, perhaps — homemade malted milk ice cream might be 10 percent more delicious.

3 cups (680 g) half-and-half

¾ cup (106 g) malted milk powder

3 egg yolks

½ cup (99 g) sugar

¼ cup (53 g) brown sugar

1 Tablespoon vanilla

Heat the half-and-half and malted milk powder, stirring, over medium heat until it comes to a simmer.

In a separate bowl, mix the egg yolks and sugars together.

When the cream has come to a simmer, very, very slowly pour it into the egg mixture, stirring vigorously. You’re adding the cream slowly to keep it from scrambling the eggs.

When everything is mixed together, return it to the saucepan and heat it again until it has thickened slightly. If you are keeping track of the temperature, this will be at around 175ºF.

Remove your ice cream base from the heat, and strain it into a one-quart container. Let it cool, then stir in the vanilla, and store, covered, in the refrigerator for several hours or overnight. It has had a traumatic day. Say something comforting to it as you close the refrigerator door.

When the ice cream base has thoroughly chilled, churn it in your ice cream maker, according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Transfer the soft ice cream to a container, then put it in your freezer to harden up.

This is a delicious, fairly subtly flavored ice cream that will complement the rich chocolate in the brownie and the chocolate sauce.

The Chocolate Sauce

1 cup (250 g) water

½ cup (160 g) corn syrup

½ cup (100 g) sugar

¾ cup (75 g) unsweetened cocoa powder

⅓ cup (2 ounces, 55 g) chocolate chips

In a small saucepan, combine everything but the chocolate chips. The cocoa is hydrophobic, which makes it sound like it has rabies, but that just means that it doesn’t like to mix with water. It will take some energetic whisking and a stern look to bring everything together.

Keep whisking the sauce over medium heat, until it just starts to boil. Remove it from the heat and whisk in the chocolate chips. They will melt and incorporate within a few seconds.

Let the sauce sit for an hour or two to thicken and for the ingredients to get to know each other. Let’s face it; you forced the issue with your whisking. It’s only fair to give everyone time to calm down and settle in.

This is not an overly sweet chocolate sauce. It’s definitely a dessert sauce, but there’s a seriousness about it. It tastes like chocolate, not like candy. You may have noticed that there is no vanilla in the ingredients; that would have rounded out the edges of the chocolate and given it a mellowness. Without it, this sauce is a handsome man in a dark suit.

Putting It All Together

It’s pretty straightforward. Plate a brownie, top it with slightly more ice cream than you might think, and spoon your homemade chocolate sauce on top. You might want to heat the brownie for a few seconds in the microwave, but just until it is gently warm, not hot and gooey. That’s for another occasion.

This dessert is all about contrast. There are chocolate purists who insist that you should use all chocolate — the brownie, the ice cream and the sauce — chocolate, chocolate, chocolate. That would be too much here. The brownie and the sauce are two shades of very serious chocolate. They need vanilla or malted ice cream to stand out and show off their depth.

A note: These are extremely dense and rich brownies. For Valentine’s Day, especially if you’re sharing, go ahead and plate a conventional-size serving. Even the two of you might not finish it — it’s that rich — but this dessert is a Medium Dramatic Gesture (MDG), so now is not the time to start being practical. When you eat the rest of the brownies over the next few days, you’ll probably want to cut them into 1½-inch squares.

A ROMANTIC COCKTAIL

In the end, love is tricky.

Sometimes it sneaks up on you; you wake up one morning and realize that you’ve fallen like a 50-pound sack of cement. Sometimes it hits you between the eyes instantly — again, like a sack of cement. Sometimes it consumes you, filling every cell with fire and bubbles. But not cement.

So how do you express that? Love letters? Fighting a duel? A prenuptial agreement?

This year Valentine’s Day falls on a Wednesday. That doesn’t leave much opportunity to express what’s in your heart.

But a good cocktail might be a good symbolic gesture.

Unnamed Valentine’s Day Cocktail

3 ounces dry gin – a botanical gin might seem like an obvious choice for this, but you don’t want to muddy the other ingredients; a crisp London-style gin like Fords is just right for this

1 ounce fresh squeezed lime juice

1 ounce elderflower liqueur – I like St. Germain

3 drops rose water – as you add this, it won’t seem like enough, but three drops is just about exactly the right amount; you just want a subtle back-note of roses, you don’t want this to be too perfumey.

Several ounces of Asti spumante – you’ll be tempted to go up-market on this, to break out your expensive bubbly, but the spumante brings a sweetness that really adds to the finished cocktail. If this cocktail goes over well enough, you can save the Dom for another occasion.

In a cocktail shaker, combine the gin, lime juice, elderflower liqueur, and rose water over ice. Shake for 30 seconds.

Strain into two cocktail glasses, and top with spumante.

Drink together while listening to Frank Sinatra’s cover of “Fly Me to the Moon.” Warning: This might lead to dancing.

The gin is the driver of this particular limousine. The spumante and the elderflower are the couple in the back seat saying, “Keep your eyes on the road, Fords.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Fords says.

The wine is what you notice in the front end, but with a floral aftertaste. This is not an overly boozy cocktail. (With that said, three of these could lead to questionable decision-making, which in a Valentine’s Day context might be just what you’re looking for.)

After all, isn’t that what Love is? The triumph of the heart over common sense?