Every year,
I prepare a Valentine’s Day dinner for my DH and, these days, also
our daughter. I try to pick a different theme each year (although the
favourites, such as ancient Rome, have to be repeated occasionally
because of popular demand). I’ve previously blogged about our Game of Thrones dinner and our Musketeer party.
This year,
the theme was chocolate. This wasn’t simply because I love
chocolate but mainly because my daughter once said we should have a
meal where we just ate “chocolate foods”… so I decided to plan
a menu where all courses included chocolate.
First I wrote a short text about why chocolate is an appropriate choice for Valentine's Day:
The
ancient Aztecs regarded cocoa as food of the gods. Both the Mayans
and Aztecs believed the cacao bean had magical or divine properties;
it was used in the most sacred rituals of birth, marriage and death.
Cocoa was used to make a drink xocoatl, considered a health elixir,
with spices such as cinnamon or hot chili peppers.
The
Aztec ruler Montezuma reportedly consumed cocoa elixir before heading
off to his harem. He also welcomed the Spanish explorer Hernando
Cortez with a drink of chocolate, having mistaken the conquering
invader for a reincarnated deity. Cortez brought cacao beans to the
Spanish court where the pepper was replaced with sugar.
By
the 17th century, chocolate was a fashionable drink throughout
Europe, believed to have nutritious, medicinal and aphrodisiac
properties. Rumour has it that Casanova, the legendary lover, was
especially fond of chocolate.
Today,
the aphrodisiac qualities of chocolate are ascribed to tryptophan, a
building block of serotonin, a brain chemical involved in sexual
arousal, and phenylethylamine, a stimulant released in the brain when
we fall in love. Whether even hard-core chocoholics can consume
enough chocolate to cause a significant rise in those chemicals is
debatable... but either way, chocolate is sweet and delicious and an
ever-popular gift among lovers.
For appetisers, I served white chocolate and olive bruschettas. I chose these because the combination of flavours
sounds rather unusual. In addition, I wanted to have at least one
dish with white chocolate. You can see the recipe I used for
inspiration here. Somewhat surprisingly, this was very good! The
white chocolate and mozzarella melted into a delicious, creamy sauce,
and while white chocolate is very sweet, olives are salty, and all
the flavours just worked together wonderfully. I was told I have to
start making these regularly!
The main
course was chicken with chocolate mole sauce. I am aware that there
are much more authentic recipes, but to save time, I referred to this
and this. I have to say that this smelled divine as it cooked! It
tasted delicious, too; the chocolate and nuts gave it a robust,
earthy flavour. Very different from anything we’ve ever eaten, but
we definitely enjoyed it. It was also a surprisingly sturdy, filling
dish.
With the
chicken, I served fresh bread and a salad with lettuce, oranges and
dark chocolate shavings. Oranges and chocolate is a classic
combination, after all (although not one I particularly enjoy…). I
didn’t use any recipe for this, just tossed those ingredients
together.
The dessert
was the hardest choice for there were so many things I wanted to
make! Finally I decided on cheesecake brownies, because I’ve always
wanted to make them and also because it’s been years since I last
made a batch of brownies. I used this recipe (in Finnish) and this
(in English) and just sort of combined, tweaked, modified, adjusted…
I was pretty sure I’d mess up the marble pattern… but it’s also
something I’ve always wanted to try. And it wasn’t that difficult
after all, or at least it worked out all right this time. Cake still
in the pan:
This was
pretty much what I expected: very chocolaty, with cake-like edges and
a more molten core. My daughter told me it was “the best cake
ever!” but then she went on to list just about every cake I’ve made in the
past 18 months and they were all also “best cakes ever”, so…clearly, she likes cake.
This was a
fun Valentine’s Day and it definitely included a lot of chocolate!
Of course, that wasn’t quite enough for us, and once we’d put our
daughter to bed, we finished the evening with these (and an episode
of House, M.D. – how romantic! 😀).
