Valentine's Day Tasting Menu

Valentine’s Day is kind of an odd day. I feel like the celebration of love shouldn’t just happen on one particular day, but cherished every day. Having said that, it still gives me a good excuse to a) spoil Helen, and b) experiment in the kitchen. As you may be aware, Helen and I love all things food, so what better than to put together a personalized tasting menu?

The menu planning started in early February as I tried to think of dishes that Helen would enjoy while also being somewhat reasonable/practical in the amount and types of ingredients I would have to get. In the end, I settled on seven courses plus a cocktail. The tasting menu ended up being an entire day affair as Helen will attest to my snail-like pace in all things, but it was all worth it (I think).

Raw ingredients: Here are most of the main ingredients i ended up using for the tasting menu minus the chicken wings

Course One: Amuse Bouche

For the amuse bouche, I decided to make sweet and spicy Korean fried chicken wings. The inspiration for this dish comes from our love of Asian food. Helen and I both love to watch all sorts of Asian Youtube cooking channels like Cooking with Dog (R.I.P. Francis) and Jun’s Kitchen (a must watch - if not for the food, at least for the cats!). The recipe that I used comes from another one of our favorites, Maangchi. The recipe I used can be found here. Overall I think these turned out really well! I only made 6 wings for the two of us because I knew we had to save room for the rest of the menu, but after finishing these, we couldn’t help but wish I had made more.

sweet and spicy korean fried chicken

Second Course: Salad

For salad, I wanted to try making a kale salad. Generally kale is pretty tough due to all its fiber, but for this salad I tried blanching it for a few seconds in a pot of boiling water and then massaging it for a bit after straining it out to break up the fibers. I’ve read that you can just massage it for a few minutes as well without blanching, which is something I’ll have to try next time, but overall I think this method was pretty successful. I mixed in some golden raisins, pine nuts, fresh parmesan with a drizzle of olive oil, lemon juice, and seasoned with salt and pepper to complete the dish.

kale salad with pine nuts, golden raisins, parmesan

Course Three: Charcuterie

Just before I left Michigan/Ohio for 3 months of away rotations for emergency medicine across the country, we wanted to have a nice dinner together, so I booked a reservation at this restaurant in Toledo called Registry Bistro. It was a really cute restaurant in downtown Toledo where they seated us on table with a balcony. One of the dishes we ordered there was a charcuterie board, which was incredible. The meats, cheeses, and accoutrements were all so rich and flavorful, that it inspired me to put together a charcuterie board of my own. For my board, I chose a lot of ingredients that I thought would taste great on their own, but could also be used for other dishes throughout the menu. I also threw in some gherkins and manzanilla olives because Helen loves them (I hate olives). The final board consisted of camembert cheese, gruyere cheese, parmesan cheese, prosciutto, genoa salami, peanuts, manzanilla olives, gherkins, grapes, and french loaf slices.

Charcuterie board from Registry Bistro

Course Four: Soup

I’ve never really been much of a soup person. I always felt like soup took up too much space for the main course, but Helen absolutely loves soup. This of course has started to rub off on me a little, and I now have more of an appreciation for it. That’s why for the tasting menu, I decided to make not one, but two soups! The first soup I decided to make was a French onion soup. I’ve only tried French onion one other time in my life, and that was a year and a half ago when my friend Joanne made it for my birthday potluck. I really enjoyed it and wanted to give a crack at it myself.

french onion soup with gruyere cheese

Course Five: Meat

I suppose you could call this the ‘main’ course of the meal. For the fifth course, I made a medium rare beef tenderloin on top of a bed of asparagus and potato puree with a rich pan sauce. It’s kind of silly, but I brought my cast iron pan all the way from Detroit to Toledo just so I could get a good sear on the steak. Tenderloin is my favorite cut of meat and never fails to simply melt in your mouth, but I think what made the dish sing was the pan sauce, which is pretty easy to make. After you sear your steak, deglaze the fond (all the bits stuck on the pan) with some brandy (and flambe if you like fire). From there I added in a bit of beef stock, worcestershire, aromatics (I used rosemary and thyme), a dash of butter, and a bit of heavy cream.

beef tenderloin with asparagus, potato puree, and a pan sauce

Course Six: Fish

Soup number two! I wanted to try and keep things fairly light after stuffing ourselves with everything else, so I chose to make a Japanese dashi broth soup with fish. This dish was fairly quick and easy to make. For the broth, I put kombu and bonito flakes into a pot of hot water to extract the flavor and seasoned with soy sauce, salt, a bit of sugar, and some sesame oil. From there you can pretty much put whichever vegetables you like in the broth. Wilting greens like spinach, dandelions, pea vines work great. I used spinach, sugar snap peas for some crunch, and the ends of a green onion. I seared some cod on the cast iron and added it to the dish to top it off.

Dashi broth with pan-seared cod, spinach, and sugar snap peas

Course Seven: Dessert

Helen isn’t too much of a sweets person, so for dessert I decided to go with something a bit more savory. I decided to make a puff pastry stuffed with peaches, camembert cheese, and prosciutto, drizzled with honey and a balsamic reduction. I ended up making two of these, but by the time we got to the end of the menu, we were completely stuffed and only had room to share one.

Peach, prosciutto, and camembert stuffed pastry with honey and balsamic reduction drizzle

All in all, I actually had a lot of fun putting together this menu and executing it. It did take a lot of time to prepare and cook, especially since I haven’t cooked most of these dishes before, but I think it was a really good learning experience and something I would definitely try again sometime.

Peace, love, and full tummies.

Daryl