Happy Valentine’s Day!

Greetings!

  

In true Hallmark fashion most people will have gone all out on Valentine's.  Some of us were content with a quiet meal at home.  While budget constraints and scheduling kept us from a low key dinner at our favorite restaurant, it didn’t prevent us from having a throw-back to our first Valentines in our own place.

A homemade romantic dinner is just the ticket.  This year marks the first three course meal I’ve ever made completely (as opposed to contributing with a group).

Starter

We started with an organic Italian lettuce blend, added slivered almonds and honey-Dijon dressing.  It was simple and quick.  One thing I’ve slowly come to learn is you can’t make the whole dinner complicated; it sucks the fun right of making it and gives all sorts of places for things to go wrong.

Main

Our main was totally from scratch.  Herbed chicken ravioli made with homemade spinach pasta, tossed with a homemade yogurt Alfredo sauce.  The filling recipe is below.  Check out the links for the pasta and Alfredo recipes!  “Yum” says it all!  I haven’t had an Alfredo sauce in years; finding a good yogurt base is amazing, and lets me enjoy a rich, creamy sauce without hating myself later…in calories and with the whole lactose thing! 

I did change the Alfredo a bit; I increased the yogurt and decreased the ricotta.  The resulting ratio was 1:1.  I also added granulated garlic; I toyed with adding roasted garlic but decided against it because of the time it would take in addition to everything else.  It turned out amazing anyway!!

Dessert

Dessert was a two part finale.  From our Bountiful Basket I had strawberries and pears.  At Matt’s request I made the pears into sorbet.  The result was a light and wonderful Ginger Pear Sorbet, and it was incredible.  The strawberries got a chocolate fondue to be dipped in.  Following a recipe in our fondue book, I modified it by adding yogurt instead of cream; it worked wonderfully!  We’ve had chocolate covered strawberries for Valentine’s the last four or five years.  Why break tradition?

We also enjoyed an amazing cup of Greek coffee compliments of Matt.  It was a perfect way to end dinner!

Bringing it all together

All in all it took 2 ½ hours to get it all done.  I think the main reason it all came together so nicely was thanks to writing down the order before hand.  There’s a rhythm to these things, and if you get it right you get dinner done at the perfect time…otherwise you have odd things finishing at odd times and chaos ensues…trust me on that!  This is the first time I actually got it all right!

Sorbet came first so it had time to set in the freezer (the ice cream maker could only do so much).  Next came the ravioli filling, followed by actually putting the ravioli together.  I had pasta left from last weekend that needed a brief thaw and was ready to go; this saved me quite a bit of time!

As the ravioli water boiled and cooked I made the chocolate fondue and got it in the fondue pot.  After pulling my strainer from my pasta pan I used the pasta water for the bottom portion of my improvised double boiler for the Alfredo.  Between getting the water going and the fondue started I got the table set and got the salad ready.

Regardless of how you spend the holiday, have a Happy Valentine’s Day!

East Happy!

Recipe:

Herbed chicken filling

·         1 chicken breast (~½ lbs)

·         Chicken broth, enough to cover the breast

·         Rosemary, chopped fine

·         Thyme, chopped fine

·         2 eggs, separated

·         1/3 Cup Parmesan

·         4 tbs ricotta

~Put broth into a deep skillet or pan

~Boil the chicken in the chicken broth until cooked through, sprinkling with herbs before flipping the chicken breast

~Let chicken cool slightly; chop finely with knife

~Add ricotta, egg yolks and Parmesan to a medium bowl; mix well

~Add chicken.  If the filling is very dry, add the egg whites.  If it is still very dry add some of the stock.  If the filling is too wet it will run when cooked, so when in doubt do dry

~Put one scant teaspoon of filling per ravioli; this recipe will fill ~1lbs of pasta