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Lifestyle
Valentine’s Day Celebration
Thanks once again to our friend Dominique who has come up trumps, and has provided us with an absolutely wonderful Valentine’s Day Menu all the way from Belgium (you’ll find the dessert on the following page!). Dominique writes: Once Christmas, New Year, Eddy’s and Stephanie’s birthdays and our wedding anniversary were over, we were glad we had time to relax. But after a few weeks I began to miss the dinner parties, strange how you get used to this type so easily….Luckily February is coming and so is Valentine’s Day. Who said that Valentine’s day is only for the ones who are ‘young and in love’?
We start our menu with a Valentine’s Day Cocktail.
Ingredients:Red Port, Metaxa, Red Cretan wine – a light one – if you can find it a sparkling one taken straight out of the fridge. Take one measure of Red Port and one of Metaxa (the content of a small Raki glass is just fine) and pour into a champagne glass – fill up the glass with the red wine and add an ice cube. You will need to make four of these cocktails, not because the pair of you are going to drink them all at once, but because you’re going to need two of them for preparing dessert. We’re ending this menu the same way as we started it!
The Menu!
Carpaccio of Red Beet and Bacon
Ingredients (for two people of course!): 1 red beet but since it’s Valentine’s Day, I’m going for the easy way out and will buy a jar from Lidl. 1 tablespoon walnuts, ½ a whole piece of bacon from Lidl (rather than slices) – without pepper – weight is about 200 gr a piece, a little bit of lettuce / marouli finely chopped, 1 small red apple and some parsley. For the vinaigrette: 1 teaspoon grated orange peel, 1 tablespoon orange juice, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, some finely chopped garlic and a little bit of salt & pepper.
Preparation:Spread the slices of red beet out like a flower on a plate – put the lettuce in the middle (as the heart of the flower). Don’t peel the apple (you’re going to need the red colour) just wash it and cut in small slices. Image you’re an artist and spread the slices out in a decorative way on top of your flower. Put all the ingredients for the vinaigrette in an empty jar and shake it. Cut the bacon in cubes and fry them in a pan (without oil or butter, the bacon contains more than enough fat). Divide the cubes out on the plates, sprinkle the vinaigrette on top and end with some parsley. Serve with a slice of bread. If you feel like it you can also add some cubes of blue cheese or Feta.
Carrot Soup with Smoked Salmon
Ingredients (since this is such a nice dish we’re also going to make some for ‘the day after’) for 4 people: 100 gr smoked salmon, 1 onion, 1 small piece of ginger (about 20 gr), 750 gr carrots, 2 medium sized potatoes, olive oil, 1 teaspoon curry powder, salt and pepper,1 litre chicken stock, 1 ‘tetra brick’ of cream – using a tetra brick is a good idea if you want to design love hearts in your soup
Preparation: Peel the onion and cut it into little pieces, peel the ginger and push it through a garlic press. Peel the carrots and potatoes and cut into small cubes. Heat the olive oil and fry the onion, ginger, carrots and potatoes. Add the curry powder and let it all fry for a little bit longer. When you heat the curry powder you’ll get the aroma of the spices and you will have much more flavour. Pour the stock into the casserole and let it cook until tender (20 minutes). Puree the soup in a blender, if the soup is too thick add some more stock / water. With some kitchen scissors cut out two hearts from the salmon. Serve the soup in dishes and put the salmon hearts in the middle. Cut off a small corner of the tetra brick, so that you can design a cream heart along the outline of the salmon heart.
Chicken Stew with Tomatoes, Spicy Salami & Shrimps
Mashed Potatoes with Smoked Red Pepper
Ingredients:1 chicken, cut into pieces (ask the butcher to do this for you), 3 teaspoons of sweet paprika powder, olive oil, 2 small onions cut in rings, 6 garlic cloves, 4 bay leaves, 150 gr spicy salami in one piece (Lidl has a good spicy salami), 500 gr fresh tomatoes, peeled and cut in pieces, 400 gr tinned tomato chunks, 6 giant prawns peeled and de-veined, 5 tablespoons of medium sherry (if you can’t find sherry you can use dry white wine in this recipe instead), salt and pepper, and of course some potatoes and a fresh red pepper / paprika.
Preparation: Preheat the oven to 190 ° C. Sprinkle the pieces of chicken with some paprika powder and salt. Heat the oil in a pan and fry the chicken until they become brown. Put the pieces in an oven dish. Cut the salami into pieces and fry in the remaining oil (you’ll end up with an orange /red oil in the pan). Add the salami to the chicken which is in the oven dish, add the onions to the orange-red oil in the frying pan and fry for two minutes. Add the garlic, the two types of tomatoes, bay leaves and the sherry, let it all simmer for five minutes. Pour the sauce over the chicken and salami, cover the dish and put it in the oven for 30 minutes. Take off the cover and adjust the seasoning if needs be. .Make sure that the chicken has already become more or less tender. Place the giant prawns between the chicken pieces in the sauce and put the dish back in the oven for another 15 minutes. Serve with mashed potatoes in which you have put small pieces of smoked red paprika. For the paprika you cut a red paprika lengthwise into two halves and take out the seeds. Cover an oven plate with aluminium foil and place the paprika on it. Put it under the grill and forget about it for around 15 minutes. Seriously, the paprika has to become black, very black indeed! Wrap the paprika in the aluminium foil and let them cool down. Then peel the paprika which has now become very sweet and tender, and cut into pieces and stir them very gently into the mashed potatoes. And of course you will be using real butter and cream for your potato puree, won’t you?
