The Best Date Night: Cooking For 2

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

On the menu:

Glazed Goat Cheese Gratin

Spiced Lamb Chops with Quinoa, Beets and Carrots

Chocolate Molten Cakes

Every year, it comes back to haunt us. That anxiety-ridden holiday where single folks feel like outcasts and couples feel the pressure to up the ante on the romance game. Both sets are left with some form of frustration—even if it’s just in trying to get a reservation for an overpriced meal at a decent restaurant. So here’s a shocker: I’m not a fan of Valentine’s Day. I still think it’s lame even when I have someone awesome to spend it with. I'd much rather save up my romantic ammo for a random evening when the rest of the world isn’t pressuring us to crave chocolate hearts and cheesy cards and store-bought roses. So every year, I boycott by not participating.

But this year was different. This year, Valentine’s spent with a three-course Garnish & Gather feast really just served as a reminder of how many wonderful date nights can happen on a regular calendar basis. It made for a perfect (and perfectly romantic) excuse to stay in, crank some tunes, arrange some wildflowers, open that wine, and enjoy an evening at home without all of the hype. Best part? This “holiday of romance” can be repeated as many times a week as necessary.

During this whole G&G experience, I’ve been growing my Rdio playlist of tunes to set the kitchen mood. But this date night called for something a little more, ahem, lovely? Special? So whether we share the same taste in tunes or not, I figured I’d share with you my perfect “Dinner for Two” playlist. Use at your own date night discretion:

1. Song for Zula, Phosphorescent
2. Chan Chan, Buena Vista Social Club
3. Sure Hope You Mean It, Raphael Saadiq
4. Just Like Heaven, Kat Edmonson
5. Something Good, alt-J
6. Swept Away, The xx
7. Concrete Jungle, Ceu
8. Beach Baby, Bon Iver
9. Better Times, Beach House
10. Corcovado (Quiet NIghts of Quiet Stars), Stan Getz
11. Season's Trees, Danger Mouse feat. Norah Jones
12. Real Love, Beach House
13. You Send Me, Sam Cooke
14. Sea of Love, Cat Power
15. Cupid, Sam Cooke
16. Two Against One, Danger Mouse feat. Jack White
17. I Get a Kick Out of You, Ella Fitzgerald
18. Black Mambo, Glass Animals
19. Bring it On Home to Me, Sam Cooke
20. That Girl, Justin Timberlake
21. Tell It Like It Is, Nina Simone
22. Wake Up Alone, Amy Winehouse
23. The Girl From Ipanema, Stan Getz

MY EXTRA (AND EXTRA EASY) DATE NIGHT TOUCHES:

 1. ALTERNATIVE TABLE SETTINGS:

• Tea lights and varying sizes of candles: and lots of them!
• Makeshift flower arrangements: forget the typical vases and use recycled glass jars—jam jars, mason jars, even sauce jars with a variety of wildflowers instead of store-bought roses.
• G&G Conversation cards: I have stockpiled most of these from past meals because I think they’re even more fun as sets! Adding them around the table keeps things lively, or—even better—make a whole new set of your own.

2. ALREADY MADE APPETIZERS

• Once all of the above is in place, I found the G&G touch of making the appetizer beforehand really helpful. You don’t want to feel like you’re having to go through a chore of prepping and cooking as a team, so I say make an event out of the whole process. Put out the Glazed Goat Cheese Gratin (holy amazing and really easy recipe from Jay Moore!) with H&F crackers to snack on and make sure no one is feeling the haste to get to the sitting and eating portion of the meal.

3. THIRST QUENCHERS

• We poured a couple glasses of red wine, and put the rest in a decanter so it could breathe, and set it out on the table (to make the arrangement look even more awesome!) so that it would taste even better by dinner time. Honestly, I would have been fine if we never sat down for a meal; grazing on goat cheese + dancing to good tunes + wine drinking in the kitchen = one of my favorite date night activities ever. “Signature” evening cocktails for this portion is also a great idea.

4. PRE-PREPPED DESSERT

• If you still feel like all this cooking will take away from the enjoyment, a great suggestion from the G&G crew is to do most of the prep work on dessert before prepping anything else. On the Chocolate Molten Cakes, I prepped the chocolate, buttered the ramekins, combined and beat the eggs in a bowl and put it away in the fridge for later. After we finished our main course, all we had to do was heat, remix the eggs a bit, pour the mixtures into the ramekins and add to the oven for 13 minutes. Super simple. 

Whether single or spoken for, here’s to making “Valentine’s” romance a regular occasion in the kitchen.