Valentine's Day Meal

I dislike going to restaurants around Valentine's Day.  The experience is usually disappointing and below the normal standards of the restaurant in question.  Also since V-Day is so close to J's birthday (for which we always go out to a nice restaurant) I don't tend to feel like so many meals out in such close succession.

Enter our first, small attempt at a homemade V-Day meal.  I took the pudding course, J took the main.  For people who love food and love to cook - this could have gone a lot better.  J bought mussels, and then kept them too long and they all died, then we dragged the steak out that we were going to be sharing later in the week and he made a quick sauce dianne and our favourite homemade chips (which are surprisingly healthy).  It was very tasty and retro.

I had already been making some little bread rolls to go with the now deceased moules and so at the last minute (for extra cute) I made a little paper template of a heart and sprinkled the rolls (brushed with milk) with a mixture of poppy and sesame seeds.  I had no idea how it would turn out but I was really pleased with the results.

I was a bit more organised with the pudding, having already decided a few days earlier to make a chocolate mousse.  Chocolate is one of J's favourite flavours but I wanted to surprise him with something unusual and out of the ordinary.  So I went searching on the BBC website (not a bad place for recipes in general) and found this epic pudding:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/chocolatecashewmouss_85284

Chocolate mousse flavoured with chilli, cinnamon, ground roasted salted cashew nuts and made using only eggs and lots of honey (no cream and sugar which I thought was interesting).  Well this was a very strange pudding.  The first spoonful was amazing and like a little piece of heaven and second was nice but rich and the third was enough.  The flavours were really nice but the whole thing was super rich.  We enjoyed it but didn't manage to finish it.  I would be tempted to make it again but probably 1/4 the serving sizes.  Still I haven't made a proper pudding in a long time so it was really great to flex my muscles there.

I also have a fairly big bag of roasted salted cashew left and am thinking it would be fun to try making my own nut butter with them.  I have heard many people rave about how amazing homemade nut butters are and I do like the idea of being able to use flavours other than peanut!  Watch this space.