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How will you celebrate Valentine's Day? Will you spend a romantic evening with your sweetheart in a local club, or will you prepare a dinner for two? With a special menu which hits the right spot, the choice is almost made: cooking a meal with your own hands certainly gives a different flavour!
To help you choose the best menu we have thought of everything: from the aperitif right through to the dessert, you will only have to follow our ideas and you're ready. In love and the kitchen, everything is allowed...
Here are the recipes for a fabulous Valentine's Day!
Aperitif
To start with, choose an elegant aperitif, with a special effect: chop our Dried tomatoes with capers, add fresh ricotta and tuna, blend to obtain a smooth cream and spread on thin slices of toasted bread. Dust with chopped basil and mint and you will obtain a delicious effect to start the evening. What to serve to accompany this special aperitif? A mimosa cocktail! Combine 1 part red orange juice and 2 parts Prosecco: it makes for an easy and very inviting aperitif.
Starter
Prepare an exotic marinated tuna sashimi: how to do it? Very simple: choose the tuna fillet in a fishmonger. It must be very fresh: get advice from your dealer! Leave the fish in the refrigerator for a couple of hours, then slice it into pieces, a couple of centimetres wide and four centimetres long. Put it in a bowl, cover with soy sauce, grated ginger root and poppy seeds and leave to marinade for half an hour. Serve with a salad of bean sprouts, capers and thin slices of orange. An extra touch? Combine some sliced char-grilled mushrooms to your salad. The mixture of ingredients will create a unique dish.
With this special starter you must serve a very special wine: Langhe Arneis DOC. A birichino wine, as the dialect name suggests, a soothing white, full of perfumed, suggestive notes.
Tajarin and Tartufata
As we said, in love and the kitchen, everything is allowed: take a risk! So, for your Valentine's dinner ... risk! After a Mediterranean aperitif, we go on to a first course which is full of Piedmont character, Tajarin and Tartufata. A sauce which releases intense aromas of the gold of the Langhe, a very traditional design for an elegant and refined first course. And if you want to go against clichés, try our Tartufata with a bronze-drawn Fusilloni, a pasta prepared according to ancient recipes, whose particularly rough surface is perfect to accommodate and retain the flavour of a special, aromatic sauce such as this.
Accompany with a well-structured red, as an important first course cannot be accompanied with a less than superior wine, Barolo DOCG, a champion. Luca Maroni, one of the best-known names in Italian wine making, gave our Barolo a score of 94/100 in the yearbook of the best Italian wines. An enchanting red, able to cope with the exuberance of the truffle without suffocating it.
Curry chicken with cashews and Basmati rice
Now, we move on to a dish with an intriguing oriental touch, spicy and tasty. Preparing it is easy! Lightly chop a chicken breast into strips. Heat a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil in a pan, then add the chicken. Brown for two or three minutes, then blend with soy sauce and a little white wine. Add the cashews, two tablespoons of curry powder, cover and continue cooking for 10 to 12 minutes.
Prepare Basmati rice. In a pan, brown two cups of rice, then cover with 4 cups of water. Add salt and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, cover, and cook over a low heat for ten minutes after it begins to boil. Serve the chicken strips with the rice as a side dish.
For this dish, full of inebriating spicy sensations, serve a balanced Bollicina, able to balance the sensations of the dish while remaining noticeable. Rosé Vino Spumante Millesimato: the perfect rosé, ideal even with such a complex second course!
Cheesecake
You must not forget the dessert ... not on Valentine's Day! Prepare a special cheesecake, with a touch of Moscato. How to prepare it? Crumble the biscuits into crumbs, add the melted butter and spread over the bottom of a buttered pan. Prepare the filling: combine ricotta, greek yoghurt and mascarpone in equal measures (250g), and whisk until smooth and silky. Heat for a couple of minutes, then add a sheet of gelatine (previously soaked in cold water and squeezed). Stir until the gelatine is completely blended with the cream.
Combine a few tablespoons of cream with DOCG Moscato d'Asti wine. Spread the cream over the base with a ladle, taking care not to damage the bottom. Once this step is completed, settle the filling by shaking the pan, then put in the fridge for at least 4 hours. Before serving, place some orange peel and chocolate on top of the cake: the effect will be magnificent!
And to end the evening, numbe, Asti Spumante DOCG! A very sweet (and romantic) way to toast, on the day to celebrate love!