Valentines Day "All Day" Dinner

An absolutely stunning Champagne!

As you may have seen from some previous blog posts, I celebrate Valentines Day by cooking my wife Jane an eight course tasting menu and serving it with some rather nice wines.   Having done this for some years now it is sometimes difficult to hit on a theme.  So this year I decided that I would serve a tasting menu based on what you might eat in England during a whole day if you were exceptionally greedy!

If you need inspiration for a special occasion menu - carry on reading.



The menu read:

A Cup of Tea to wake you up
Egg and Bacon breakfast
Elevenses - Pot Noodles
Lunch - Chicken Sandwich
Afternoon Tea - Scones, Jam and Cream
Dinner - Lamb and Cabbage
Dessert - Millionaire Shortbread
Midnight Feast - Cheese, Cake and Coffee

So what did I really serve?

A lovely Alsace Riesling to go with the Asian dishes

Green Tea Granita

Quails Eggs and Pancetta on a nest of Salad

Seared Tuna with ginger, chilli, garlic and spring onion noodles

Chicken Nem with a  Nuoc Cham dip

Great Argentine Red Wine by Michel Rolland

Cheese Scone Hearts with Tomato Jam and Cream Cheese

Braised Lamb on a Polenta and Cabbage Stack with sauce

Deconstructed Millionaire Shortbread

Genoa Fruit Cake, Wensleydale Cheese and Expresso  Coffee

Thanks to the inspiration and recipes for my eight dishes from the following chefs, bloggers and websites:

Samovar Tea Lounge for the Green tea granita - I added very little sugar as it was a refresher at the start of the meal.

Quails eggs and pancetta salad was my idea -  Make a nest of salad after tossing in a mustard vinaigrette, crisp up some pancetta in a frying pan and poach some quails eggs for just one minute.

Pot Noodles was inspired by Heston Blumenthal but was my own recipe.   Sear some tuna for about ten seconds on each side and then marinate in a mix of soy sauce and lime juice.  Heat up some noodles in some chicken stock.. Stir fry some chilli, spring onions, garlic and ginger and then add the heated noodles.  Add some noodles and stock with the flavouring to the bottom of a pot Noodle container and then arrange the tuna and marinade on top.  Serve with some chopsticks.

The Vietnamese nem wraps came from Waitrose.  I made my own Nuoc Cham dip from a recipe on the www.taste.com.au website.

The cheese scones with Tomato Jam and Cream cheese idea come from Matt Tebbutt.  I adapted it by making smaller heart shape scones and flavouring the cream cheese with spring onion and parsley.  It was perhaps the highlight of the evening - absolutely delicious and well worth trying.  the jam is easy to make and I found the scones easy to mix in a Thermomix after adding a little more milk.  My small ones took only 10 minutes to cook.

The braised lamb is a good dish to do as part of a multi-course menu as it cooks whilst you do other things including eat.   Mine was an Angela Hartnett Recipe.   I thickened up the cooking juices into a sauce in the thermomix whilst steaming the cabbage above it.   Beautiful tender flavourful lamb.

The deconstructed millionaire shortbread was my idea made with crumbled shortbread, salted caramel icecream and grated chocolate.  The thermomix ice cream was made in advance using a recipe from Tenina.com.

The last course is a traditional way of eating cheese in Yorkshire.

The wines had been stored for a number of years and were at a lovely maturity to enjoy with the tasting menu.menu.  I doubt you can get these years any more but these producers are well worth seeking out.   The 1997 Vintage Blanc de Blancs champagne from Ployez-Jacquemart was wonderful.

The menu may appear disjointed but  it worked.  Be brave!    On Valentines Day it is fun to cook something special for the love in your life.   By the way, I worked during the day, got home at about 17.15 and had the first course served at just before 20.00.