Valentine's Day Dinner

Instead of the usual post where I include one component of a meal, I've decided to post a few possible valentine's day menus. This first one is spectacular if both you and your special someone enjoy salmon. Ironically, my special someone who I cook everything dairy free for hates salmon so I will not be using this on valentine's day. However, I love this meal so much I'm preparing it for myself! I'm going to post several different possible meals including the one that I am preparing but this is the first and the truly spectacular part of this is that a lot of it can be done ahead! Also, don't think I've forgotten about those dairy free desserts. Those will be coming soon.

The menu:
"Grilled" (winter grilling = broiling for me) Wild Sockeye Salmon with a balsamic port reduction sauce
Wild Rice with red wine poached pears

Okay so the first thing I suggest doing for this meal is making the reduction sauce. Reduction sauces are great for a few reasons. They are extremely easy to make and can be easily rectified if a mistake is made. Since reduction sauces are boiled to evaporate the water and concentrate the flavor, they pack a huge flavor punch. Finally, whereas a good number of sauces have a fat base (such as a roux), reduction sauces are lower in calories and fat.

You need:
Olive oil for the pan
1/2 onion VERY FINELY diced
2 cloves of garlic diced into almost a puree
2 cups port wine
2 cups chicken broth
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar

Balsamic Port Reduction:
Get out a sauce pan and heat over medium-high heat with enough olive oil to coat the pan. Once the pan is hot, put in the onions and cook until golden and translucent. Then, add the garlic, stir, and cook for a minute just until that intense garlic aroma hits you. Increase the heat to high and pour in the port and chicken broth and boil for about 20 minutes or so until the liquid has substantially reduced (about half) and is beginning to thicken. Now, pour in the balsamic vinegar and continue to boil for another 5-7 minutes until the sauce is thick enough to coat the back of the spoon. Taste to make sure it is flavorful enough. If it is still lacking in intensity, boil a few more minutes. If it is too strong for your liking, you can simply add a little more chicken broth and reduce until it is where you want it. Once it's ready, take it off the heat and strain into a glass bowl. Then, when the sauce has come to room temperature you can cover and refrigerate until ready.

Red wine poached pears:
3/8 cup red wine (6 tablespoons)
1 bartlett pear
1/2 cinnamon stick
1 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice

Peal and halve the pears and remove the cores. In a small pot, add the red wine, cinnamon stick, and lemon juice and bring to a boil. Then reduce the heat to medium and add the pear halves. Simmer for about ten minutes and then turn and simmer for an additional ten minutes.

Remove from heat and put the pears in an airtight container with the poaching liquid and refrigerate until you're ready to assemble dinner.

Wild Rice:
Cook your rice according to package instructions. When the rice is cooked, dice the pears and stir into the rice (about 2/3 cup of rice for two people). Add a little of the liquid for taste and keep warm until dinner.

Salmon:
I love grilled salmon but since we have had an impressively aggressive winter, I'm going to refrain from brushing the ice and snow off the grill and stick to broiling. Place a rack about 6 inches from the broiler and heat the broiler. Place the salmon filets on the broiler pan and brush with the balsamic port reduction. Depending on the size of your filets, cook until the fish is just firm basting once again in the middle of the cooking.

Sweet and Sour Brown Rice with Green Apple

Yeah it's a long name but it is a really great side dish. It packs a lot of flavor and goes well with seafood or chicken. You can also make this a main dish by adding a little roasted tofu or chicken.

This recipe serves 4

2 cups brown rice
3 tablespoons brown sugar
3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
2 teaspoons lime zest
1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 medium green apple diced in 1/2" chunks
Juice from 1/2 lime
Cook the rice according to directions.

Once it's cooked, in a small bowl whisk together the brown sugar, vinegar, lime zest, garlic powder, and ground ginger. Stir in with the warm rice.

Once you've diced your apple, pour on the lime juice and stir together. Add the apples to the rice and you're ready to serve.

Sweet Potato Soup

This is a spectacular cold-weather meal that is both healthy and satiating. It's also great to prepare for dinner parties because it can easily be made ahead of time and then simply reheated prior to serving.

5-6 medium sweet potatoes (enough for 3 cups purée)
3 chipotle chiles packed in adobo sauce + 1 teaspoon of adobo sauce
2 cups soy or almond milk, divided
2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons butter replacement
3 cups low sodium chicken broth
3/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 fresh ground nutmeg
apple slices for garnish and several sprigs of fresh rosemary


Start off by cooking your sweet potatoes whichever way you're most comfortable doing so. Once they're cooked, wait until they cool slightly and then scoop out the flesh of the sweet potato into a food processor. With it, also put in your chipotles, adobo sauce, and 1 cup of the soy or almond milk. Purée until smooth and set aside.

In a large stock pot, heat the butter replacement until melted on medium heat and then whisk in the flour. Continue to whisk and cook until the roux becomes fragrant and light brown (about 5-10 minutes depending on whether you have a gas or electric range). Once the roux is ready, slowly pour in the chicken and broth and vigorously whisk to make sure the roux is incorporated. Then, you want to bring this to a boil over medium-high heat. Once it's boiling, add the sweet potato mixture that you set aside, the spices, and remaining milk and bring back to a boil over medium-high heat and then reduce to a simmer and simmer for 8-10 minutes to let those flavors come together and become friendly.

When you're ready to serve, take an apple and thinly slice and immediately place the apple slices in acidulated water (cold water with a few teaspoons of lemon juice). Ladle the soup into the bowls and place a few apple slices with a sprig of fresh rosemary and serve.

Honey Cornbread Muffin

These cornbread muffins are extremely versatile and can be made days ahead of time and stored in an airtight container. Even more importantly however, they're moist! For some reason, the result of many cooks' attempts to create cornbread is a combination of dry and flavorless bread. This recipe will provide 12 regular sized muffins.

**A handy way to measure things like molasses, honey, and maple syrup, spray your measuring cup with baking spray before pouring in the ingredient and it will pour out much easier.

1 cup yellow cornmeal
1 cup all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder (yes, a tablespoon is correct)
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup soymilk
2 eggs
1/4 cup earth balance butter replacement
1/4 cup honey

Preheat the oven to 400. Melt the butter and let cool. In a large bowl, mix together the cornmeal, flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt. Then in a medium bowl, combine everything but the butter. While whisking the wet ingredients, slowly pour in the butter. Don't be concerned if the butter solidifies in little balls because it will melt while cooking and produce steam.

Stir in the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients just until incorporated. Now here comes the trick that I picked up from Alton Brown. Once the batter is made, it's best to scoop out the batter into the muffin tin and then let it sit for a half hour. DO NOT TOUCH THIS once you have dolled it out. The baking powder will begin to work its chemical magic and produce little bubbles throughout the batter that will give it a more even rise that will stay risen after baking.

After the batter has rested for a half hour, bake for about 15 minutes until golden brown.

Sweet Potato and Roasted Banana Mash

This may sound kind of weird but it's wonderfully sweet, healthy, creamy, and a fantastic side dish for something like a maple glazed chicken breast. Furthermore, it's pretty easy to make and gets all of its sweetness from the natural sweetness of sweet potatoes and roasted bananas.

4 medium sweet potatoes
2 ripe bananas
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 cup almond milk or soy milk
1 tablespoon margarine

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Slice your bananas in half lengthwise and sprinkle the cinnamon over it. Roast until the bananas are soft (it really depends on the size of the banana but it shouldn't take more than a few minutes). Remove the bananas from the oven and puree in a food processor and place in a large bowl.

Now for cooking the sweet potatoes, it depends on your preferred method. I microwaved mine but you can do it in the oven if you like. Once the sweet potatoes are cooked, let them cool and then process them as well. Once they are pureed, add the milk and margarine to the warm puree and puree again just to incorporate the milk and margarine. Then stir the sweet potato puree with the banana puree and serve.

Noodle Kugel

I have never met a kugel I don't like. The noodles, cream cheese, raisins, and cinnamon are the hallmarks for the most incredible Jewish comfort food. That being said, not only is it difficult to make dairy free, but it is also a caloric nightmare. In my opinion, this version is just as good as the traditional versions but it is incredibly slimmed down.

1 tablespoon bestlife margarine
12 ounces egg noodles
2 cups silk live yogurt
2 cups tofutti cream cheese
2 eggs
2 additional egg yolks (and if you're making souffle for dessert, those remaining whites come in handy)
1/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons honey
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 teaspoons lemon zest
2 teaspoons cinnamon
pinch of nutmeg
1 cup raisins

For the topping:
1/2 cup corn flakes
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 350 and coat a 9"x13"x2" baking pan with baking spray. Bring 4 quarts of water to a boil and cook the egg noodles for about 6 minutes because you want them a little al dente. When they're finished, strain them, rinse them, and stir in the remaining tablespoon of butter. Set aside to cool.

Put the silk live plain yogurt and cream cheese in a mixing bowl with a paddle and mix on medium high until smooth and combined. Then mix in the eggs, sugar, honey, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, and lemon zest and mix to combine. Remove the bowl from the mixer and stir in the raisins. Then pour in the noodles to the bowl and stir to combine and pour the entire mixture into the greased pan.

Then, crush up the corn flakes and mix them with the brown sugar and cinnamon. Pour the mixture evenly on top of the kugel. (**If you wanted to prepare this ahead of time, you should do everything but put the topping on and refrigerate for up to a day). When you're ready to cook, put the kugel in the oven for about 35-40 minutes until the top is golden.

Enjoy!

Bacon and Tequila Pinto Beans

This recipe if from the Rick Bayless cookbook and it is incredible. If you are a bacon fan, which I happen to be, cooking this will make your house smell like bacon (fantastic!) This recipe is also great because it keeps pretty well for a week or so and gets better as the flavors are allowed to combine so feel free to make it a day or so before you're ready to serve it.

8 ounces pinto beans
1/2 cup cubed pork shoulder (or 2 ounces bacon)
4 thick slices of bacon
1 small white onion - diced
2 jalapenos (one if you don't like things too spicy) - seeded, stemmed, and diced
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 tablespoons tequila
1/4 cup roughly chopped cilantro

Rinse the beans thoroughly and put them in a medium sized pot (like a dutch oven). Cover them with 5 cups of water and remove any beans that float. Then, put in the pork shoulder or bacon. Bring the beans to a boil and then reduce the temperature to medium-low so you can keep the beans at a gentle simmer (partially covered). You'll need to cook them for about 2 hours stirring occasionally and adding water when necessary so that there's about 1/2 inch water above the beans.

Then in a fry pan, cook the remaining bacon until crisp. Then remove the bacon onto some paper towels and pour out all of the bacon grease EXCEPT for 2 tablespoons. Then, using the bacon grease, put in the onion and jalapeno and cook over medium heat until they're golden brown (10 minutes or so). Then, scrape the onions into the beans and season it with salt.

At this point, you want to cook the beans for 20-30 more minutes to let all the flavors come together. Also, you don't want to add any more water so don't worry that the water level will drop because this isn't soup.

Now, if you're serving this right now, crumble the bacon over top and stir in with the tequila and cilantro. However, if you're storing this, keep those additions off until right before you serve because that way, you'll taste the fresh tequila and have the crunchy contrast to the creamy beans.

Here's a note about rinsing the beans. I know it's tradition to soak the beans over night but Rick Bayless (highly acclaimed, James Beard Award winning chef) insists that soaking beans is unnecessary. Quoting from Mr. Bayless himself, "after having cooked almost 12,000 pounds of beans a year for most of the nearly ten years we've had Frontera and Topolobambo, I've learned quite a few things. Many are simple confirmations of what we've been taught all along - except one thing: I was taught to soak beans and I no longer do. Never having seen Mexican cooks soak beans, I've come to the conclusion that they know what is right. Soaking does practically nothing but reduce cooking time. Soaking doesn't really make the beans much more digestible, which is what we were all told. Yes, soaking and throwing out the soaking water does have some effect, the scientists now tell us, but nothing we should count on. What makes beans more digestible is a steady diet of beans, the diet nutrionists tell us we should have anyway" (241). So there you have it, from the man himself.