VALENTINE’S & THE MORNING AFTER

The Philippines was the first place I ever had to face Valentine’s Day without having to manage a restaurant. That nightmare night fraught with emotions that no mere restaurant should have to handle.

The Philippine Valentine’s Day is a particularly mixed blessing. Much looked forward to, but an one compromised with the difficulty of finding the right day for taking out one’s wife when one’s number one mistress and perhaps two lesser ones expect that day to be theirs as well.  

Definitely a day for some to see red.

I prefer Chinese New Year when everyone gets little red envelopes stuffed with cash.  My mother always received a huge box of chocolates (at least five pounds) that was heart-shaped and covered in red fuzz trying to be velvet. Perhaps the size was meant to be a diversion from my father’s Filippino inclinations. I always loved the long-stem red roses. The greenhouse variety look good only in vast and luxurious hotel suites of the old kind, like the Crillon or Dorchester. But hopping on a Boeing gives me pause these days, so I will just have to figure out which red food I am going to serve at home instead.

There are Page Mandarins (shipped as in Hong Kong in little red envelopes) that are a confluence between Minneola tangelos and clementine mandarins. Certainly preferable to purple Peruvian or red thumb potatoes. Magenta-colored watermelon radishes by themselves are a bit spicy, even when sliced paper thin and treated like carpaccio. But perhaps the first course would be just that, with Italian red sweet onions. But onions and garlic cannot be part of romance, unless there is an impassioned grande bouffe on everyone’s part. 

Or shabu-shabu. Two dipping the beef in broth and then feeding each other. If not too embarrassing the others in the room.

Courtesy of Japanese Cooking 101

Certainly blood oranges.

Roses infused into the juice from them would take care of the rose problem and perhaps even start a trend.

After the first course the red theme could involve beets, when organic, heirloom, small, roasted and served with cold-pressed organic canola oil. Inspiring discussions of aphrodisiacs.

The best food and drink to prompt the mortal coil to arousal? Salmon always works. Its oils open up the tubes. Acai is rich in anthocyanin, an antioxidant which, because of its ability to aid instant circulation, is considered one of South America’s hottest aphrodisiacs. As far as antioxidants go, acai has 10 times the antioxidant potency of red wine but is 10 times more boring. As for alcohol, what goes up must come down. The same with alcohol, almost everyone’s first choice of aphrodisiac. Up with the first two glasses, then down after that. Angelica or even Archangelica is sometimes called “The Holy Ghost” for its reduction of anxiety, but I think this must be what happens after drinking the extraordinarily delicious 100-proof V.E.P. Chartreuse. The aphrodisiac Drink from Norman Douglas’ Venus in the Kitchen is Curacao mixed with and port, garnished with lemon and nutmeg and served hot. I have tried this. For me perhaps not enough psychotropic nutmeg, or just that an old vintage port after dinner would have worked better. Lily of the Valley, Asphodel of Elysium, Solomon’s Seal, Butcher’s Broom may all be linked to Asparagaceae, and all lilies. Eat asparagus in the English way by picking them up in one’s fingers, raising one’s mouth to the heavens and slowly sliding the asparagus stalk into one’s mouth. The olive oil, Hollandaise, or butter dripping off the end. One can see why it is cast as an aphrodisiac.

But so far nothing is red. So back to the subject at hand.

Then there are maroon carrots (too cooling of the blood), red Kuri squash (also a bit cold) and endigia – another confluence, this time of Treviso radicchio and chioggia chicory. It would be very good if dressed in the rose-petal-blood orange juice and hazelnut or walnut oil (the nut oils and chicories love each other) and smothered in truffles.

Courtesy of Watts Farms Gastronomia Vasca

Courtesy of Everypixel.com

For dessert I would rent a big screen and play “Woman on Top.” That way, if all else fails, one could have a dessert of red chilies, because we know they work. At least in the film. And if they don’t, looking at either of the film stars, will. Mixed (the chilies) with pomegranates that you each have to slice open and suck out the juices. Or rhubarb, which I adore, and the one from Puyallup Valley in Washington. Of course, if you can say that name by dessert time, none of the above is working.

So chill down a magnum of pink champagne, and get down to the real business of Valentine’s, starting with a drink using red Campari.

MENU FOR VALENTINE’S

Negronis straight up in chilled glasses (no orange peel)

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Chilled oysters, red Ancho chili granita

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Carpaccio of grass-fed beef with a julienne salad of magenta watermelon radishes dressed lightly in sesame-jasmine-canola oil

Laurent Perrier Cuvée Rosé

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Poached warm wild Atlantic salmon with a red rose petal infused Hollandaise

Sicilian (very romantic) rosé of Regaleali

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Endigia or Treviso Salad with black truffles and fresh hazelnut oil

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Stewed rhubarb with pomegranate sabayon, minced red chilies and Woman on Top

Dom Perignon rosé en magnum

That should do it for two. And get someone else to cook it. 

THE MORNING AFTER

The evening worked so well that your guest stayed over. Now you are faced with morning. And what to serve. 

If they are feeling fragile and think they’re not hungry, you know an hour later they will be. That’s not good. Before restorative food, serve Black Velvets. Nothing settles the nerves more gently than this persuasion in a velvet glove.

You should always have champagne or sparkling wine on hand before a date, as well as one of those “draught” cans of Guinness that pours just as if you were at the pub in Dublin. Chill two of your 10-ounce, thin-stemmed wine glasses and your magnum-sized wine bucket. For the most effect possible, use an ice bucket at the table with a large, white napkin available to catch the drips.

Serves 2

1 bottle                  Champagne

1 12-ounce can      Draught Guinness

Put the wine and the Guinness in the refrigerator at least one hour before you want to make the Black Velvets. Fill the ice bucket half-full of ice and then add enough cold water to come up within 8 inches or so from the rim of the bucket. Put the wine bottle and the can of Guinness in the ice bucket, drape a large, white, starched and iron napkin over the top of the bucket, and bring to the table, kitchen counter – wherever. Float some red rose petals on top of the ice.

Take the wine out of the bucket, wrap it in the napkin, and open the bottle as you have practiced. Flip the Guinness can open.

Pour half the Guinness very slowly (here you get to expound on the importance of the ‘head’ of Guinness) into each chilled glass. Let the stout settle one minute. Then very slowly pour 2 ounces of the wine in the stout, leaving an inch from the surface of the now Black Velvet and the rim of the glass. 

If you forget the order of pouring or pour too fast and the Black Velvet starts to froth over the rim of the glass. No worries. Pour the mixture into larger glasses and add a very little of the stout and then the wine - or you say confidently that Black Velvets are supposed to be drunk while frothing over.

Courtesy of anothercocktailblog.com

A perfect and easy fast snack for that moment is Curried Crabmeat on toasted English Muffins          

As you always have Thomas’ English muffins in the freezer, all you have to do is buy the crabmeat. Ask the place where you buy it if you can take the top off the container and smell the crabmeat: it should have no smell. Buy “back fin” or “jumbo lump” which, though more expensive, is worth every extra dollar. If you have curry paste from a jar, you do not have to let the dressing for the crabmeat sit for 20 minutes. Over the moon but not fast and easy is to put a poached egg on top of unadorned crabmeat (no mayonnaise, cream only) and cover that with curried Hollandaise.

Serves:  2

6 ounces                fresh crabmeat

1 teaspoon             curry powder or curry paste

1 tablespoon          Hellman’s mayonnaise

2 tablespoons        sour cream

½ tablespoon         fresh coarsely ground black pepper

                               Salt

2                            Thomas’ English muffins, split

                              Unsalted French butter

Put the curry powder or paste into a bowl and add the mayonnaise and the sour cream. Mix well. If using the powder cover the bowl and let sit in the refrigerator for 20 minutes to dissolve the grains of the powder and to develop their full flavor. Then add the crabmeat and mix gently but thoroughly. Season some salt if it needs it, and all the pepper. Mix again and refrigerate for 10 minutes.

Toast the English muffins, butter them, and spoon the crabmeat equally onto the four pieces. Eat at once.