Red Pepper Walnut Dip with Blue Chips and Cabernet Franc, Chicken with Cranberries ~OR~ Chicken Roulade ~OR~ Chicken Parmeroni, Red Salad with Pink Hearts, Red Velvet Cheesecake

Image Cred: John Hancotte’s Bass Desires

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Dinner for Two

Hallmark did this to me

Sometimes VD seems like an affliction. It makes me feel like getting in a bar fight with someone who writes cards for Hallmark. But when push comes to shove, I’m a pacifist. Thus, like many guys, I often turn to baking to work out my frustrations. Baking helps me sublimate my instinct for physical violence into verbal violence, because “words will never hurt me.” Thank God for that little saying. It justifies so much of the shit that I feel free to say to people.

I bake to express my feelings

I hate someone telling me when and how to love, except during role play. Are chocolate and roses by some unbelievable coincidence the truest expression of every love in the world? Aren’t some of our relationships, if we’re going to be totally honest, a bit better captured by Cuban cigars and quaaludes? I’m just saying.

Yet I do believe in romantic dinners, and VD is the perfect occasion. So I accept VD. I embrace VD. I try not to focus on the fact that I haven’t quite recovered from forking my wallet over to Corporate America during Christmas, and now it’s already got its flowers-and-jewelry fist around my balls.^[1] Instead, I think about sunset, followed by a romantic dinner – intimate and candle-lit – on a tropical beach. The stars come out. It’s not cold, but one of my three footmen builds a fire. The butler pours wine. The menu is more of a slow dance or Argentinian tango than a salsa. We talk into the night, I’m in one of those rare moods where I actually listen, and we’re reminded of all the reasons we fell in love.

I’m attracted to a romantic dinner as an expression of love because I can do it with my own two fists. This is me. It’s personal. It’s not just about buying you stuff, it’s about making you stuff. It’s about you and in honor of you, your tastes, your preferences.

I’m talking about this:

And this:

A home-cooked meal kills in the love department! If you’re a dude like me – well, not many of you are probably dudes like me because there can be only one … let’s just say “if you’re a dude,” – if you’re a dude, the idea that you’re inept in the kitchen still hangs in the air like the smell of cooked cabbage. Will that stereotype please move on? Thank you. Until it does, though, guys: pull this move off, and you will score so big … I mean, the only way to top it would be to present your date with an adorable rescued puppy in between the appetizer and the main course.

Valentine Dinner for Two

Menu

Appetizer: Red Pepper Walnut Dip with Blue Chips and Cabernet Franc
Entrée: Chicken with Cranberries ~OR~ Chicken Roulade ~OR~ Chicken Parmeroni
Side: Red Salad with Pink Hearts
Dessert: Red Velvet Cheesecake

Planning:

Three ways to go with the entrée. Choose only one, but choose wisely.

1. The cranberry dish takes less prep time. It’s simple, but delicious. It’s entirely do-able, and it doesn’t hurt that it cooks in a slow-cooker. It says, “I’m homespun dad-material. There’s a lot of cuddling in your future.”
2. The roulade is complicated. It’s also delicious. It has a “wow” factor – an outright ambitiousness – that the cranberry dish lacks. But it is a major time suck. Unless you want to be too exhausted for Valentine’s love, prepare absolutely as much of it as you can the day before. This dish requires chicken livers. It is highly likely that you’ll wind up with more than you need. Bonus! Make paté! It’s easy. I’d be happy to show you how. Roulade will leave your valentine wondering how you acquired such skill. It will cast you in a whole new light. Ultimately, it says, “I’m a man of many talents. Smooth, polished, sophisticated. I might have superpowers.”
3. Parmeroni defies the norm. Parmeroni thinks outside the box. Paremroni sets the ingenuity bar quite high and is hard to follow. In other words, do not serve Parmeroni for Valentine’s Day unless you’re prepared to demonstrate afterward that your take on the Kamasutra is equally clever.

You can split the world into two categories … well, three: there are those who’d rather spread the work out, those who’d rather do it all at once, and those who say they’d rather spread the work out, but they never get round to it and wind up doing it all at the last minute.  I kind of like a very wide spread myself, so here’s what I’m planning to do for VD this year:

4 Days Before:

• Stock up on items with long shelf lives today if not beforehand, perhaps tossing them in with regular grocery shopping.
• There are only two items that I would probably not shop for today: the chicken and bread (if you’re planning to serve bread with the dip). I’d save them for later. You could shop for both of those items today if you want to, but if you do you should freeze them as soon as you get them home – which means you’ll have to plan to properly defrost them at the right time. You’ll have to look up how to do that if you’re not sure. I’ll point you in these directions: chicken, bread.

3 Days Before:

• Make the Red Pepper Dip.^{[2], [3]}
• Watch Down with Love. I think it’s underrated.

2 Days Before:

• Make the Pink Hearts. Alternatively, you can make these well in advance and freeze them.
• Clean up the house. No one wants to see how you really live, and you don’t want anyone to see it.  If you two already live together, cleaning up the house will score you some advance points.

1 Day Before:

• Shop for the chicken and the bread. If you choose a bread that won’t last the night – like a baguette – then you’ll have to put this off to tomorrow (in which case you might as well put off the chicken, too).  Most heartier breads should be just as good tomorrow as they are today if they’re fresh when you buy them.
• Make the Red Velvet Cheesecake. Since you have to freeze the cheesecake layers, there’s no reason you couldn’t make them as well as the brownie layers in advance and keep them all frozen until you’re ready to thaw them out and assemble the cake. Not crazy about Red № 40? Check out “5 Sexy Desserts To Make For Valentines Day,” from Made Man.

Red Velvet Cheesecake

Valentine’s Day:

• Set the table. If it’s feasible, you could also spread this work out so that you could have it done or mostly done before the big day. That might seem like overkill to you, but it always seems like way more work than you planned for if you leave it to the last minute.
• Have butler and first footman build sand-castle dining room on a private beach in the Seychelles. Uh … you didn’t think I did that myself, did you? Oh my god, no. When I say “my own two fists,” what I mean is my butler and first footman. I suppose I should say “my four fists for hire,” but that just sounds weird.
• Make the entrée.
• Make the salad. Use everything listed, or mix and match to suit your tastes. Dress with your favorite store-bought or homemade dressing. Red Vegetables: red leaf lettuce, tomatoes, red bell pepper, beets (roasted, then chilled), radishes, red cabbage, red onion (perhaps). Red Fruits: apples, dried cherries or cranberries, red grapes (sliced in half from top to bottom and seeded).