64: I'm not a romance fiend...

I regard Valentines as a consumerist holiday (but we're not given a day off). A spectacle of burning wallets and a debauchery of the up priced chocolate, roses, hallmarks and the fizzy (sparkling juice).

With each poor man trying to outdo his past year's Valentines achievements, just for the slight chance of some "happy-happy-fun time" in the pants. We've all been down that road before. It sickens me.

Regardless of what I may or may not think about Valentines, I still have my missus to please (not for the promise of "happy-happy-fun time in any of our pants, I assure you). And since I have reached the age where I can go out and drive, prepare anything I want, I thought, heck, lets cook a 3 course thing for her. No roses or hallmarks. Where fizzy is replaced by whatever he have on hand (I didn't dare touch the duty-free eiswien even though my dad was "go ahead") and the closest thing to chocolate is a coffee-chocolate bavarois. Yes, I am NOT a romance fiend, but I sure damn well can (and will) cook (not professionally, but to make things more dramatic, lets imagine I can).

I got all the recipes online, but tried to play around with them and improvise. I wanted something new and fresh for the starter. Soups and salads were overdone time and time again (and how much fun is a garden salad? Wooww. [/sarcasm]). Although at one point where I was racking my brains till the point of breaking, I almost went for a can a Campbell's mushrooms soup with a cut up assortment of mushrooms. For shame.

Starters should be something simple. And by sheer dumb luck, my starter could pair up nicely with the main course.

A Garlic-Brie Crostini, on which I performed a lobotomy and ripped out the "garlic" and "brie" and replaced it with "spiced" and "feta". All I did was sear (is that the correct word?) the baguette with a little olive oil so it becomes crispy on the top, and the gave the tomatoes a quick roast. Done and done. I just topped it off with cheese and enjoy.

Thank god for the plentiful baguettes, because nothing is more fun than dipping bread in cream sauces; as shown with the main course, pan-seared chicken with portobello-chestnut sauce with steamed spinach and couscous. To deviate a little from the original recipe, I replaced the Porcini with Portobello, and because it is impossible to find orzo here in Malaysia (I highly suppose..) I used couscous instead. Now mind you, this was the first time I was working with couscous, after a billion times seeing it on TV. My only comment? Couscous rehydrated in chicken stock tastes like cardboard.

I used a souffle cup to shape the couscous, and sprinkled a little black pepper on top for some colour.

Then during dinner, I just put the chicken with some chestnuts and mushrooms on the plate...

Simple enough.

Dessert sadly was not taken, because I thought it had failed to set. A variation of the mango bavarois we made in the pastry kitchen, I used coffee and dark chocolate instead. It was all fine and good (I did not follow the online recipe, but instead used the one that I learnt), until after 3 hours, I did not set. In light of my failure, I did not serve it :( All my hours of work went down the drain :( But it did taste bloody good though. Coffee cream is really the best.

And that was my Valentines. We played a bit of Micheal Buble and some Air Supply. Yes, maybe I should have planned it better. Maybe I should have pulled 0ut some fancy things. Maybe next year, and that's a promise.