As you will have read on Thelma's blog, we celebrated Valentine's Day by cooking and enjoying a seven course meal as a family. Our children loved it. It felt novel and luxurious. They keep talking about "our seven course meal" as if it is something we now own—some badge of honor for us to proudly wear. That night, Mark prayed and gave thanks that we were able to attend church and have a seven course meal.
Thelma came up with the great idea close enough to Valentine's Day that I was willing to discuss and dream with her about how to pull it off. Ordinarily, Thelma likes to plan our holidays six to eight months in advance. I prefer to start thinking about things a few weeks ahead of time at the most.Thelma and I have had a few multi-course meals, but not many. I'm sure any meal where some of your food is served at separate times technically counts as a multi-course meal, but I don't think a meal should really get credit just because the kid behind the counter handed me a cup for the soda machine in enough time for me to take a few hits of Diet Coke before calling my order number. Salad, then spaghetti, then spumoni at the Spaghetti Factory comes close. A second helping of bottomless steak fries at Red Robin? Probably not.
I had to look up the components of a traditional seven course meal.
- Appetizer
- Soup
- Salad
- Sorbet. It is not enough to simply say "sorbet". In our house "sorbet to clense the palate" seems to have become the general parlance.
- Meat, preferably poultry.
- Meat, preferably red meat our fish.
- Dessert
In keeping with the Word of Wisdom and its instruction to use meat sparingly (Doctrine & Covenants 89:12), we dropped one of the meat courses and added a cheese course at the end. We focused on foods we like to eat and foods that would be flavorful in small amounts. As a result, we ended up with the following menu that was not exactly designed to have any coherant interplay between the courses:
- Salt and pepper crostini topped with bruschetta.
- Chicken coconut curry soup.
- Caprese salad on a basalmic reduction.
- Lemon sorbet.
- Thyme-seasoned steak, parsley red potatoes, sauteed asparagus and mushrooms, jumbo shrimp and basil roasted walnut spread.
- Rasperry mouse cake topped with strawberries and blackberries. (It's just one of many wonderful creations you can pick up at L'Artisan French Bakery near Silver Lake. I had my first one a few weeks ago when Janet gave it to me as a thank-you gift for helping with Eric's surprise birthday party.)
- Red grapes and crackers with a selection of Havarti dill, Double Gloucester and white cheddar and smoked salmon cheeses. (My favorite was the cheddar and salmon cheese from Captain Black Seafood in Stanwood. You can pick some up at QFC or Haggen's.)
And now for a few of the recipes.
Salt and Pepper Crostini
Preheat your oven to 350°F. Slice a baguette into sections about 1/4 inch thick. An 16oz. baguette will yield 30-40 crostini. Arrange the slices onto a cookie sheet. Spray with olive oil. Sprinkle with coarsely ground salt and pepper. Turn the pieces over and apply olive oil, salt and pepper a second time. Bake for 15-20 minutes, flipping the crostini one time during baking. Serve hot or cooled with your favorite topping. We used a room-temperature bruschetta we purchased from the antipasto bar at Central Market.Sauteed Asparagus with Mushrooms
20 stalks asparagus
1/2 cup sliced mushrooms
1/2 tablespoon butter
1/2 tablespoon olive oil
Salt and pepper
Blanch the asparagus by cooking it in boiling water for about 1 minute. Drain and set aside. Saute the sliced mushrooms in the olive oil and butter. (This is a trick Thelma taught me. Using a mixture of butter and olive oil lets you enjoy the butter flavor with healthier olive oil.) Add your preferred amount of salt and pepper to the mushrooms. Add the asparagus to the mushrooms and continue to saute the mixture until the aparagus is tender.
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