Valentine's Day at Home

Amuse bouche: watermelon, pealed cherry tomato, basil, basil oil ala el Bulli

Valentine's Day is notoriously one of the busiest days of the year for restaurants. Reservations are booked and special V-day fixed menus are designed temporarily nudging the regular menu to the side for the night. Because of this I thought what better way to celebrate than to cook a nice dinner at home. I wanted to make a four course meal and settled upon a soup of some sort, something that could use a beurre blanc, a market salad, and butternut squash gnocchi.

Soup: I heard about an amazing carrot soup that was served at the French Laundry at one point and was describe as a carrot explosion in your mouth. Sounded great and I even found the recipe online from Saveur. This was served with a "fine herb" mousse, which was whipped creme fraiche with some chopped herbs folded in. Think of a creme fraiche whipped cream in terms of texture and a hint of herbs. It was a really nice complement to the silky soup.

Carrot soup with fine herb mousse

Scallops with a clementine beurre blanc: I really wanted to try out making a beurre blanc since I think mastering, or at least learning, classic saucing techniques can really improve a dish. Translating to "white butter" a beurre blanc is an emulsified sauce consisting of wine, vinegar, or both along with shallots and butter. It is often finished with some type of citrus such as clementines (one clementine down from the 50 or so in the bag!). It is a notoriously difficult sauce to make since the emulsion often breaks when the butter is whisked into the reduced wine/vinegar mixture over low heat. I wanted to do a twist on this and foam the sauce so I jumped at the chance to use Jess' iSi whipper. After I made the sauce (it didn't break!) I added some into the iSi canister, charged it with some nitrous, and shook vigorously. Sometime during that process I realized that the releasing the pressurized nitrous into the canister is a very cold process (think the carbon dioxide canisters for cleaning your keyboard) and that this was mixing with my butter sauce. Uh-oh. Sure enough when I tried to dispense it the sauce was now solid! Oh well. Luckily I save extra in case anything went wrong. Jessica promptly informed me that I could keep the charge canister in a warm water bath until I was ready to dispense it next time...sometimes it pays to consult the professional. Anyway, I served the clementine beurre blanc with seared diver scallops.

Scallops with clementine beurre blanc

Market salad: Simple. All I wanted was something from the market that went with prosciutto and a sherry vinegrette. I decided upon blanched shaved aspargus and shaved colored carrots with leeks.

Market salad: prosciutto, carrots, asparagus, greens

Butternut squash gnocchi: For long time I've wanted to make gnocchi. I've read over and over again about how hard it is to make perfect gnocchi as alight as a pillow and not dried out. I chose to butternut squash since, for some reason, this seems easier and less technical than the traditional potato gnocchi. The problem with the recipe was that it called for a 1-1.5 lb butternut squash. In terms of making a dough with flour this seems like quite the range...but it was all I had to go on. While they turned out really good (served in a sage butter sauce) they were a bit "mushy" - definitely could have used more flour.

Butternut squash gnocchi with butter sage sauce

Overall, I was quite happy with the meal and learning a new sauce (and having it technically work out well).