What to cook to impress my Girl Friend??

Swampy

Ok I need help. My girlfriend cooked for me last week and now it's my turn on Saturday.

I'm looking for a little advice on what to cook.

Ideally i'd like to do the 3 courses, but I will take just advice on the main course if you are willing to give it.

I'm looking for something different and tasty. Something not tooooo hard but exotic enough to look like I put a lot of work into it (which i'm willing to do).

So any favourite recipies that have been successful for you, i'd be grateful for your help.

I'm not looking to copy, but I am looking for inspiration.

Cheers big ears.

Samson

Starter - Mushrooms Baked with Camembert and Wine by Janet Brinkworth

Ingredients:
4 Portobello mushrooms
2 handfuls of spinach
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Dry white wine
Camembert, brie, or Vacherin, sliced

Preheat the oven to 190°C/gas 5.

Top each mushroom with a few spinach leaves and season with salt and freshly ground pepper. Pour white wine over each mushroom, then top each mushroom with slices of Camembert, then the remaining spinach. Wrap each mushroom up in kitchen foil and place the mushroom parcels in a roasting tray.

Bake for 20-25 minutes.

Serve at once, allowing each diner to open their mushroom parcel.


Main course - Lamb Marinated in Olive Oil and Thyme and Served with Flageolet Beans by Mike Robinson

Ingredients
1 tbsp finely chopped sage
1 tbsp finely chopped thyme
2-3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
Olive oil
2 lamb fillets, weighing about 175g each
Knob of butter
1/2 tbsp plain flour
100ml red wine
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the beans:
400g canned flageolet beans, drained and rinsed
1 red onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
2 thyme sprigs
1/2 punnet of cherry tomatoes, quartered
1 tbsp chopped flat-leafed parsley
1 tbsp olive oil
Splash of balsamic vinegar
Squeeze of lemon juice
Salt and freshly ground black pepper


Pound the sage, thyme garlic and olive oil to a thick paste, using a pestle and mortar. Smear this over the lamb fillets.
Put the beans, red onion, garlic, thyme, tomatoes and parsley in a saucepan with the olive oil. Place over medium heat and simmer for 3-4 minutes, stirring, to heat through. Add a splash of balsamic vinegar and a squeeze of lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper. Set aside and keep warm.

Heat a heavy-based frying pan over medium-high heat until hot. Add the lamb and sear for 2 minutes on each side. Transfer to a warm plate.
Reduce the heat to medium-low. Add the knob of butter to the pan. Sizzle for a few seconds, scraping up any sediment from the pan. Sprinkle in the flour and stir for 30 seconds. Stir in the wine, bring to the boil, then simmer for a minute or two until thickened and slightly reduced. Season with salt and pepper.

To serve, spoon the bean mixture onto warm serving plates. Place the lamb on top and drizzle the sauce over the lamb.


Dessert - Crème Brûlée by Gary Rhodes

Ingredients:
8 egg yolks
50g caster sugar
600ml double cream
1 vanilla pod
Demerara sugar for glaze

Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/gas mark 4

Mix the egg yolks and caster sugar together well in a bowl. Bring the cream to the boil with the vanilla pod. Remove the vanilla pod from the cream, split it down the middle (length-ways) and scrape the insides into the cream. Now whisk the cream into the egg yolks and sugar. Sit the bowl over a pan of hot water and heat until the custard begins to thicken, stirring all the time. It should now have the consistency of single cream.

Divide the custard (through a sieve, if you don’t want vanilla seeds) into six small ramekins. Sit these in a roasting tin. Add hot water to the tin to a level of three-quarter way up the sides of the ramekins. Finish in the oven until just set, should take 20-30 minutes. To test, remove one of the ramekins after 20 minutes and give it a gentle shake, should be slight movement in the center of the custard, if it is too runny, give it another 5 minutes and check again. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes, put them in the fridge for at least an hour.

To finish the Brûlées, when set, sprinkle liberally with Demerara sugar. Put them under a very hot pre-heated grill as close as possible to the heat. As the sugar heats it will caramelise. Remove when the sugar is golden brown and bubbling. A blowtorch can be used to do the same job. Refrigerate for 20 minutes to allow the sugar to harden. They are ready to serve.

secret_squirrel

Are you mad??? Creme Brulee as a first attempt??? Its one of the hardest desserts to get right.

My advice pick a coupla good nigel slater recipes (you can find a few on the net) ....they all taste delicious and are very very tolerant to messing around with ingredients and quanties. Even when they dont quite work they come out tasty!

Unless you're prepared to cook a practise meal first on someone not as important I dont think you can go wrong with him.

Swampy

Thank you both for the help so far. Keep it coming. That mushroom starter sounds fantastic.

vibe666

how simple do you want it?

are you a good cook generally with a bit of flare, or a beans on toast kinda guy?

if it's the latter, you can go for tesco's finest, but you'll need to find some that work nicely, as they aren't all 'fine'.

they do a very nice pork in armanac, and the chicken in bacon with cheese & leek sauce is also good.

they have plenty of side dishes that would go well too, just pick out something that looks nice.

middle of the road effort wise would be a spag bol.

you can make something surprisingly nice using the basic dolmio/ragu sauce as a base and building on that.

generally pick outthe herbiest one you can find, and add a couple of glasses of red wine, sun dried tomato paste and the secret ingredient would be schwartz italian herbs, which have a really nice flavour to them.

bung it all in with the best mince you can get (steak mince if you can find it) some onions, garlic (not too much) and mushrooms, and a tin of chopped toms and you're done.

best way would be to cook it the night before and let all the flavours get right through it.

fresh spaghetti (not the dried stuff) and some nice home made garlic bread to start. french stick or ciabatta, butter, garlic, parsley and some mozarella to top it off.

as for desert, try and find some nice vanilla ice cream, and get some of the cadburys double cream chocolate bars and melt them over a pan of boiling water until they form a liquid, and pour directly over a couple of scoops of the ice cream. if you can drizzle it off a spoon to make lots of little lines over the ice cream then all the better.

whack them back in the freezer for 15 minutes and you're done.

dudara

The mushroom starters sound great.

For main course got for fish. It cooks in a few minutes, and it's hard to get wrong. Get two nice salmon steaks, and marinate them in teriyaki (should be able to get that in any big supermarket). Heat up a pan nice and hot (not roasting hot mind you), add butter and a little oil. (Butter gives a lovely flavour, but will burn if the pan is too hot, hence adding a little oil as well).

Fry each side of the steak for a few minutes and serve with salad, noodles etc.


I'm not a dessert person so I'll leave that up to someone else. For further inspiration check out the BBC food website
BBC Food

Samson

Originally posted by secret_squirrel
Are you mad??? Creme Brulee as a first attempt??? Its one of the hardest desserts to get right.

Not at all, I do Crème Brûlée a lot, it's easy.
And, I got it right first time I ever did it.
Just follow the instructions.

SoundWave

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main: Sweet Chilli and Lime Tuna with pak-choi and wild rice.

Ingredients:

Fresh Tuna Steaks
2 Limes
Sweet Chilli Sauce
Fresh Corriander (can also use dried)
Fish Sauce (or soy)
pak-choi
fresh garlic
wild rice
sesame oil

Method:

1. marinate the tuna: place the tuna steaks in a bowl and add a small bit of sesame oil, a bit of soy, some salt and pepper (do not use any vinegar or lime in the marinate as the acid in it cooks the fish, which is a different dish altogether).

2. make the sauce: in a bowl combine the juice and zest of 1 lime, the sweet chilli sauce, some chopped corriander, the finely chopped garlic, some fish sause (or soy) and a small but of sesame oil, mix it all up and season to taste then set aside.

3. cook the rice

4. quarter the pakchoi and steam for about 8 minutes, then remove and stirfry with a small bit of the sauce(just enough to coat them) for about 2 mins

5. heat up a skillet pan (without any oil) there is enough in the marinade, and sear the tuna for about 1-1.5 mins on each side (you want the center of the tuna to still be pink otherwise you may aswell be eating tinned stuff)

presentation is important with this dish, put the rice in a ramekin dish (or small teacup) and turn out onto the plate, arrange the pakchoi alongside it, and slice the tuna steak diagonally and place on top of the tuna, then dirizle the sauce on tip of the tuna and add a few wedges of lime and a sprig of corriander.
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for desert you could make banoffi, its very easy to do and is damn tasty. will post insturctions if u need them.

Rob

Lafortezza

god I'm hungry

quank

try cornflakes........

....... its the thought that counts :rolleyes:

secret_squirrel

to really impress her try those new kellogs Banana crunch corn flakes...for that sophisticated bon viveur.

On the subject of tuna steaks tho - they can be more or less cooked like normal steaks. (with the same sorta cooking times - rare to well done lol)

Coat some tuna steaks in olive oil then coat in cracked black and/or red/green pepper corns then cook in a frying pan and/or skillet as above.

Or even simpler get some good quality beef steak (sirlion is best) make sure it is nice and marbled (tiny veins of fat running through it), also make sure the meat is quite dark which means its aged well.

Then just fry in full fat butter with either worcester sauce or a touch of garlic until its cooked as you like, although you should at least leave it pink! Personally I like mine blue to rare if Im it doing myself.