My Valentine's Top 5

Kate Takes 5, thank you for getting me to come up with 5 wishes for Valentine’s, because it’s helped me to clarify my thinking on what I’d like cooked for me!

Music, the food of love?

1. My first wish is to not eat out at a restaurant on Valentine’s Day. I love going to restaurants, but on this one day, they become unbearable. Fawning service that’s on OTT sales mode, red heart-shaped-thingies and rose petals getting in the way of my wine glass, compulsory set menus, and smoochy couples everywhere. I love being at home instead, and this Valentine’s, I would like to savour this over an apéritif of campari and orange.

2. For starters, a small elegantly-dressed plate of succulent scallops grilled with pancetta, and served dotted with creamed corn and just a touch of caramelised onions.

3. For mains, a risotto bianco with home-made pesto (made with a pestle and mortar and not a food processor, thank you). Frangelico is really good at the risotto and pesto from Jamie's Italy, and it’s become his signature dish vis-à-vis our Aussie cousins (Musical Chef Senior, Musical Chef Junior, and Gum Tree) after he made it for them a few Christmases ago. Next to this, I’d love a chicory salad dressed in lemon juice and olive oil.

4. For dessert, since he’s cooked all this other stuff, I’d be more than happy with a shop-bought/heat-in-the-oven sticky toffee pudding. But it has to be a particular shop-bought sticky toffee pudding, namely the one from Cartmel that’s hand-made from real food (no E numbers, inverted syrups, hydrogenated fats, etc).

5. It’s been raining again in London, and I’m feeling a bit under the weather. So to help me fight off the bugs, a small hot toddy at the end wouldn’t go amiss!

I’m starting to think that stating one’s wishes clearly is the first step to making them come true…

Love

Truffle

Back to the Fearrington

Prince Charming and I have now been married for 10 years. We had two weddings in the year 2000 to accommodate a timely green card application. The first was in April - a small affair in San Francisco. Immediate family and a few friends gathered at City Hall in the morning to witness our legal union and we had 50 guests join us in the evening to enjoy the food, wine and the view at the Carnelian Room at the top of the Bank of America Tower. A few months and a green card application later, we had a grander get together of 1,400 guests in Chennai, India for our Hindu wedding with two receptions and that encompassed meals prepared by a famous chef of that time, Arusuvai Natarajan, and a gala dinner at the Fisherman's Cove Resort that ended with fireworks. Yes, fireworks.

You might remember that we went to the Fearrington Inn back in April to celebrate our SF wedding (see Picture! Picture! Picture!). Well, as creatures of habit and nostalgia, we decided to go back to the same place for our August anniversary too. Once again, it was perfect. The weather was a cool 73⋅F, the gardens gorgeous, and the food simply impeccable.

Everything went like clockwork, and we chose the wine pairing to go with our three-course meal again. The sommelier, Max, did a remarkable job once again and paired each dish with a nice wine. What I liked was that he chose wines that I had not heard about, but what surprised me was that they were mostly sweet! Gerwurztraminers and Rieslings! And an Austrian wine I had not heard of but whose name just rolls off the tongue - the Grunerveltliner. As we analyzed why the sweet wines went so well with our beef carpaccio with pesto creme, Charming's foie gras with English ginger cake, my lobster tortellini with lime and vanilla dressing, we realized it was because every dish had a good dose of .... sugar. Don't worry, I am not complaining (see post on sugar). Just observing. Anyway, with each glass of wine, I found it harder and harder to remember the names and vintages, and Max was kind enough to write them down for us and I have attached it here for you ... and me. I am not very good at filing paper away.

Look at the list. Who in today's fast paced lap-top tapping world writes like that? That writing is more from times past... In any case, it's going to keep us going back to the Fearrington for future anniversaries.

Cinnamon