A Valentine's Day In

I am not a huge Valentine's day fan but, it is still nice to take the time to prepare a nice meal. ESFSW and I had gone to Stone Brewery for dinner the Saturday Valentine's Day as our night out. It was a great end to a nice day spent in Fallbrook. The meal as always was delicious (despite ESFSW not being able to get the sausage sampler) and the beer sublime like usual (mostly because they had some of our favorites! Russian Imperial Stouts how we love indulging in your dark malty complex and intense flavors!) But, enough about Stone for now...there will be a separate post on them anyways in the days to come. Valentine's day fell on a Tuesday this year and as I have a standing tutoring appointment that night ESFSW and I decided to postpone our Valentine's day for the following day and we would eat in. I was in charge of everything except the grilling and the table setting. We made cheddar mustard risotto, sauteed mushrooms and leeks and grilled steaks (hmmm...we seem to do those a lot judging by my posts...we don't really! I swear!).

Menu: Cheddar Mustard Risotto, Sauteed Mushrooms and Leeks and Lemon Marinaded Grilled Steaks

Rough Recipe: Cheddar Mustard Risotto (Tweaked slightly from Nigella Express Recipe)

You can access the recipe by clicking the link or picture above. My tweaks were minor and instead of recopying the recipe and potentially forgetting a step I thought I would just outline what I changed. I made sure to get Extra Sharp Tillamook Cheddar to make sure there was a good strong cheddar flavor. I have been tempted however to get some Irish cheddar and try this recipe with that (but I digress). I also used Trader Joe's vegetable stock. What is nice about this stock is it has a deep color and strong flavor which melded well with the cheese and the mustard. I did use slivered green onions although I have skipped that ingredient in the past and never missed it. The two biggest changes is the amount of mustard I added...lets say it was an overly generous squeeze out of the stone ground mustard bottle. Hey ESFSW has two bottles, why not use lots! Although I probably could have used a smidge less than I did use. Now despite being at Trader Joe's just prior to cooking dinner to buy a bottle of Zinfandel to go with dinner I did not buy wine for the risotto. So I whipped up a 1 part water, 1 part apple cider vinegar with a Tbs of sugar to replace the white wine. This does give a more intrusive flavor than a white wine would have given, but it adds to the complexity of the cheddar and mustard. While, risotto can be time consuming this recipe really isn't too bad as long as you have everything prepped and ready before you dive in. 

Rough Recipe:  Sauteed Mushrooms and Leeks

Mushrooms - trimmed and sliced

Leeks - chopped into 1/2 in thick pieces

garlic

butter

Melt butter in a fry pan add garlic and saute gentle. Add mushrooms and saute. When the mushrooms are half way cooked add the leeks and cook til they have softened but the green parts are a deep bright green. If you want a more buttery flavor drain the juice that cooks out of the mushrooms when cooking before adding the leeks. If the pan seems too dry then add more butter as you cook. Serve immediately.

Rough Recipe: Lemon Marinaded for Steaks or Chicken

1 gallon size zip-lock bag
olive oil
Lemon juice
Lemon zest
garlic (3-6 cloves, peeled and crushed)
salt
fresh ground pepper
(any other desired herbs - fresh will yield more flavor)

Combine all the ingredients in the zip-lock bag. Add meat and let marinade in the refrigerator for up to a day. Flip the meat over at least once to get both sides marinading evenly.


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This was a pretty good joint venture for ESFSW and I. He helped a lot with shredding cheese to cutting up mushrooms and leeks for me and then of course being the Grill Master! The final result was wonderful and a whole lot less stressful compared to going out on Valentine's Day. And we felt all special lovey feelings that couples in love are suppose to experience mid-February. The wine on first sip was a bit of a disappointment but after letting it breath a bit more it opened up nicely! Good suggestion from the Trader Joe's employee - Leonhart Zinfindel.

There was also dessert, but you'll just have to wait for the recipe to hot chocolaty goodness!