Valentine's Day Dinner for the Woman Who Would’ve Been Fine With Culver’s

My fiancée has an inspiring passion for life and living. I thought I had an enviable ability to wake up most days and be happy to see another one, but she has an energy and joy that often makes me wonder if I need an attitude adjustment. Being around someone like that is contagious, in part because we don't want much more than for the ones we love to be happy, but also because it serves as a reminder that they are happy with you. Though she would have appreciated me just picking up Culver's and some flowers, I wanted to make a dinner that served as a better example of the amount of thought, effort, and care that I reserve for her and our relationship.

The ideas for this dinner were borrowed from our dining experiences and her favorite flavors and foods. Only one of the elements of this dinner comes from a cook book, and I am so bad at making dessert foods that I fucked it up anyway. We have very simple plates at home, at least until we add all of Korin's plates to our wedding registry, so I had to get creative with the plating.

The first dish was inspired by one of her favorite small bites, Jose's Asian Taco, from Bar Mar in Chicago. The first time that we had these together was the night she met my parents. At one point during dinner she turned to me and said, "do you know what I am thinking?" Of course, I am not a mind reader, so I did not.

We continued after dinner to the theatre, and after the first or second intermission, just before the part where everyone in the crowd is supposed to be quiet, she said, "I think I'm in love with you." That was apparently what she was thinking at dinner, and though it would arguably make for a better story if I had known, it would have been fairly bold to make that suggestion given we had never said those words to each other before.

At Bar Mar, the ingredients listed for this dish are nori, iberico de bellota ham, hamachi, and osetra caviar. I had planned to replicate this exactly before remembering that we had lent our car to her sister for the weekend, so I used salmon instead. As you can probably tell from the photos, there are no rigid ingredient lists or instructions required here.

These really are fantastic. I think I could eat 40.

The first trip we made to our local butcher, Paulina Market, involved her finding frozen chicken Kiev that she loved. Since then, they have had delivery issues with their provider, and she laments every unsuccessful trip. What better time for me to play the hero?

With two more courses to go, I didn't want to make a full Kiev, as she would have been too full for the remainder of our dinner. Thus was born one of the more fun and challenging dishes I have ever made, brown butter chicken Kiev "bites" accompanied by a chicken jus.

The bites were perfect for preparing beforehand to allow me to step away from the table for a shorter time period after the first dish. I pulled them directly from the freezer, heated the oil to 350F, then fried and rested them. The jus ideally would have been prepared just before serving, or timed appropriately to finish before serving, but this was not realistic given the format.

I reduced this first, without any butter, then let it cool to room temperature and stored it in the fridge on the day of. Before serving the first dish, I put this in a pan on low heat to keep it slightly warm, then I pulled it from the heat, whisked in the butter, and put this into something to pour from while the Kiev bites rested.

For the bites, it would have been more dramatic to make them smaller, but at the time I did not appreciate that tiny 9g balls of butter would turn out to be approximately 35g of butter, chicken, and breading. The balls looked and felt incredibly small to me, so more power to you if you can go even smaller. Double breading exaggerates the size some, but most important to me for this dish on this day was that it maintained its structure and integrity while frying.

A5 wagyu. Not much to it frankly, but simple and effective in this format. As with the Kiev, I needed something that could either be prepared in advance or prepared quickly. Using a meat that cooks in only a matter of minutes seemed ideal, and it turns out to taste incredible as well.

I bought two 4oz wagyu striploins from Crowd Cow. I do not have strong opinions about Crowd Cow, for whatever it is worth, but they also had the iberico and they were a trusted source willing to deliver frozen A5 a few days before cooking.

I let these thaw, pulled them from the fridge before starting Dish 1, unpackaged and dried them thoroughly, then returned them to the fridge on a rack. I pulled them again and let them sit at room temperature around the time of finishing up Dish 2.

I salted the beef, then put both slices into a large stainless steel pan without oil, pressed them into the pan, then waited ~45 seconds, flipping once they were easily unstuck from the pan. I cooked the second side for another 45 seconds, removed them from the pan, and took a temperature reading from one.

They were around 90F, so I returned them to the pan, then flipped every 20-30 seconds, removing again and checking temperature after about a minute. They were around 110F, so...you get it. I pulled them at 120-125F; ideally you would lean closer to 120F or slightly below it.

I let them rest for a few minutes, then sliced them in a way that seemed most reasonable to me, most importantly against the grain. The thickness of these cuts does not allow for the most presentation-pretty serving, but after a few bites you won't really care much how they were served. Use a very sharp knife and slice straight through, limiting any "sawing" to the extent that you can.

A pastry chef I am not. She loves raspberry, so it was always in my mind to have a raspberry sorbet here. I started thinking about the elements of desserts that seem to work well at restaurants, and it was Valentine's Day after all, so I included a chocolate element and a brown butter graham cracker base for texture.

I nailed the graham cracker.

I planned to use my Ninja Creami Deluxe for the sorbet, but after taking it out of the box from Christmas an hour before dinner was to start, I realized I could not find the blade that it requires.

I let the already frozen raspberry stuff that was to be sorbeted warm a bit at room temperature, broke it up into chunks, then put it in the Vitamix and slowly ramped up the speed until I got a texture that I was going for. This worked quite well until I removed it from the freezer before Dish 3 and it warmed enough that I couldn't get a good, clean quenelle from it.

For the mousse, after 10 minutes of nothing happening while whipping the egg whites and sugar, I abandoned that part of the dish entirely and combined my whipped cream with the melted chocolate, again until it resembled something similar to a mousse. For similar reasons to the sorbet, this didn't take to shaping very easily, so I made it into a ball when serving.

The sorbet was actually quite good despite being ugly, and chocolate is chocolate, so it wasn't a total disaster.

We are all - men especially and myself included - guilty of feeling too "cool" to express emotions of love sometimes, publicly and privately. Valentine's Day reminds me that expressing your feelings and emotions, in whatever form and platform you choose, is just honest, not uncool. In fact, downplaying one's feelings and emotions is far less cool - or masculine - than being prideful of them. I will try to continue expressing mine on more than just holidays.