Dinner a Deux

This year marked our first Valentine's Day as a married couple where we lived in the same city (imagine that).  Last year, Paul flew out to Salt Lake and we had dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, The Paris Bistro.  While usually this restaurant can do no wrong in my book, their Valentine's menu was a complete let down for me.  It was a prix-fixe menu (so the options were very limited) and the items they did have on offer were surprisingly underwhelming and no where near as good as their usual offerings.  To top it all off, at $65 per person, it was no bargain.

After looking around at my favorite restaurants here in San Diego and seeing that all of them were offering prix-fixe menus for Valentine's Day, we decided to spend this year making a feast for ourselves at home (in an effort to avoid repeating the disappointment of last year's experience).

I put Paul in charge of the first course, and he did not disappoint when he decided to assemble a cheese board with the following cheeses:

For Christmas, my sister Renee got us these awesome cheese knives from Sur La Table:

And the cheese board gave us an excuse to finally use them - thanks Renee!

It was hard to pick a favorite between them since they were all delicious. The gouda was so interesting with the bits of black truffle infused throughout (as you can see here):

And the taleggio tasted truly amazing served atop a baguette with smoked salmon:

And it tasted even better paired with champagne, of course:

For the main course, I made my ravioli with brown butter walnut sauce that I have featured on the site before:

 

I used store bought pasta instead of making my own from scratch since it was a week night and it tasted great:

We accompanied dinner with one of my favorite wines, which we first tried in Portugal on our backpacking trip through Europe:

And for dessert, I tried my hand at making a souffle for the first time.  I have always been terrified of trying to make a souffle since you always hear horror stories about how if you so much as sneeze, let alone slam a door, a souffle will collapse in the oven and be destroyed.  Since I was scared and didn't have high hopes of it working out, I just made a simple chocolate souffle.  But I am happy to say, it is one of the easiest desserts that I have ever made (and delicious too), so stay tuned for more complicated flavor combos soon!

To start with, you will need a souffle pan (I got mine at Crate and Barrel for $10):

Preheat oven to 350 F.  Rub the inside of the souffle pan with butter, then coat with sugar, like so:

Take half a bag of bittersweet chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli):

 And melt them in a double boiler (I don't have a double boiler, so I made my own version of one by placing a glass mixing bowl over gently boiling water and it worked just fine):

Stir the chocolate as it melts so that it doesn't burn:

And heat until it is completely melted:

Then add 3 egg yolks and stir to mix (it will look grainy and similar to brownie mix batter, as pictured below):

Next, add a pinch of salt to 6 egg whites (I'm not sure exactly how much a pinch of salt is - lucky, I have a measuring spoon just in case):

Whisk salt and egg whites together at medium speed until they just hold soft peaks, like so:

Add 1/3 cup of sugar and beat at medium speed to mix.  Increase speed to high and beat until the whites just hold stiff peaks, like so:

Add 1/2 of egg white mixture to chocolate mixture and mix thoroughly to combine:

Add chocolate and egg white mixture to the remaining egg whites and fold carefully (so as not to deflate egg whites) to mix:

Then pour the batter into the souffle dish:

And bake for 25 minutes (whatever you do, DO NOT open the oven to check on the souffle or it will collapse).  When it is finished it, should have risen to the top of the pan (it will start to sink almost immediately after you remove it from the oven, so don't worry if it doesn't stay tall and fluffy for long):

Since it was Valentine's Day, I decorated my souffle with rose pedals, powdered sugar, and a heart:

I served it with Rosa Regale sparkling red wine (which I have posted about before):

Hope you all had a lovely Valentine's Day!