Valentine's Day

What to do? Do I take my other half to a nice restaurant, or cook her something. In the end, I decided to plunder my various cookbooks and cook a special meal for her, containing some of her favourite ingredients.

For starters, I decided to try an old favourite with a bit of a twist. Grilled Halloumi Cheese is always good, and I decided to serve it with deep fried rocket, sweet chilli sauce and hoisin sauce. Deep frying rocket was quite scary as, despite my best efforts at drying it, it still spat over the whole kitchen and threatened to give me first degree burns!

Anyway, it all worked great, and was very tasty.

For the main course I dug out my Paul Gaylor book and decided on Green Pea & Mint Ravioli with Saffron Cream Sauce and Truffled Beetroot Salad. This was the first time I had made ravioli since my Cordon Vert Diploma Finals and I 'cheated' a little bit by using a food processor to make the pasta dough, but it was one of the best pastas that I have made, and the filling worked beautifully. The saffron sauce was, if I say so myself, amazing and I'm making the dish again for Mother's Day.

For dessert, I decided to do something with rhubarb, one of my wife's favourites. It's not something I would normally eat, but I thought I'd give it a go, especially as I had cooked it.

Searching through my Dennis Cotter book, I came across Rhubarb Shortbread with Butterscotch Sauce. It looked very nice in the picture, so I figured I'd give it a go. I made the shortbread twice as I burnt the first batch. The second batch worked fine and the dish was a success.

The whole meal, washed down with some Verve Cliquot was lovely, and I was really pleased with it. Most important of all though, my wife enjoyed it too.