Going out for dinner on Valentine’s Day? You must be mad and have far more money than sense! It’s expensive, it’s usually poor value because of high demand, and it’s impossible to get a table at top places that actually make an effort.
Staying in is the thing to do. An excellent home cooked fillet steak would buy you barely a starter in a restaurant, but it’s not just the money. You can create an ambience you like, play your favourite music and make it a truly romantic night. And you can cook the meal together or make it a surprise feast for your Valentine.
Here’s a handful of easy, reliable and supremely delicious recipes.
Lamb loin cooked medium rare is beyond delicious, especially wrapped in crispy prosciutto, and it’s completely failproof when cooked in a very low oven. Just like sous-vide in a top end restaurant!
Prosciutto wrapped lamb loin
RECIPE
A gorgeous fillet steak perfectly cooked, served with anchovy butter, is just the dish to prepare for the two of you on that special night. My recommended technique is to flip the steaks every fifteen seconds and it never fails!
Chicken saltimbocca is a delightful Italian dish of chicken fillet layered with sage and Parma ham, which is also ridiculously easy to prepare. It jumps into your mouth, which is precisely what ‘saltimbocca’ means in Italian.
Something meat free, amazingly delicious and very impressive: vegetarian Wellington, with mushroom and spinach layer around baked celeriac centre. It’s easy to make ahead, and even easier to make it vegan: just use vegan pastry and skip the butter.
Celeriac, mushroom and spinach Wellington
RECIPE
Moules marinière are the perfect starter: very little effort and a delightful sharing dish. All it takes is to clean the mussels and debeard them, then they only need to steam in the white wine sauce.
Mussels in creamy sauce
RECIPE
It can be a starter or a main. Scallops thermidor, fat little molluscs baked in creamy fragrant thermidor sauce on a bed of spelt and pancetta. And that daunting-sounding thermidor sauce is easier to make than you think.
If you both love pasta (and who doesn’t?), you could do worse than this recipe for creamy fettuccine with roasted mushrooms, delightfully easy and amazingly tasty. Cooked down cream makes sauce, oven roasted mushroom slices are stirred into the pasta, with a few dried porcini boosting the umami flavour.
Creamy fettuccine with mushrooms
RECIPE
Salmon and potato bake with creamy topping on the salmon and a pinch of crisp Parmesan on the potatoes – it’s a delicious and easy dish, much more impressive than it sounds and well suited for a special occasion.
For dessert, it must be chocolate! And this is the easiest chocolate mousse recipe, a simple, two ingredient, eggless chocolate dessert ready in minutes. Make a chocolate ganache, cool it down then whip it lightly – that’s it!
A madeleine for a Valentine: this is my personal favourite, both because it’s absolutely divine in taste and because it’s so easy! Prepare the madeleine batter with only a tiny bit of fuss (brown butter) even a few days ahead, then bake a batch on the day.
Almond and brown butter madeleines
RECIPE