Valentine's Day 2014

Tom and I celebrated Valentine's Day this year the best way we know how: by eating some delicious food. We decided against going out to dinner and opted for making the most decadent meal we could think of in the comfort of Tom's apartment. I came up with a menu, then we went food shopping together the night before for the ingredients.

Our menu:

We went to the New Deal Fish Market in East Cambridge for the lobster and oysters. Little did I know this is apparently the most expensive time for lobsters, so we decided to buy a live one instead of lobster meat. I think it was a good plan!

(Yes, I wore my custom made chef's coat for the occasion!)

We started the evening with tons of prep -- while Tom cooked the lobster I prepped the Charcuterie board so we could snack on it throughout the rest of the cooking. This is restaurant quality folks. Somebody hire me!

Other prep included: grating lots of cheese, cleaning and chopping vegetables, breaking down and getting the meat out of the lobster, making the sauce for the mac n' cheese, cleaning and shucking the oysters, baking bread and and making breadcrumbs, and making the Parmesan foam (!!).

Getting ready for the pot...

Turned red!

Delicious lobster meat

Oysters ready for shucking

Frantically stirring the cheese sauce (look at that grip)

White asparagus cleaned...

..and blanched

Getting ready for the foam!

For the mac n' cheese, we loosely followed Ina Garten's recipe but added some extra spice in the form of cayenne and paprika. We halved the recipe so the sauce came out very thick at first. I ended up adding way more milk than the recipe called for, but it turned out really great in the end!!

I was super excited to break out my gastronomy kit for the Parmesan foam. Tom took charge on this task and followed this recipe. I can't believe how great it turned out!! The flavor wasn't THAT strong, but it went so well with the vegetables. We are Top Chefs!!

We managed to time everything so it came out together. Check out the mac n' cheese all hot and bubbly.

And ready to get in my belly...!

We sipped some amazing Spencer Trappist while we ate:

And finished the night off with something sweet. We had thought about making dessert, but getting the timing down seemed too difficult and neither of us are pastry chefs. We decided to raid the tempting Whole Foods counter instead and picked up a few things to share:

That cookie bar was out of this world good.

It was definitely an evening to remember. I'm so happy I have someone who shares my love of food and experimenting in the kitchen, and appreciates my extremely cheesy self (I swear he smiled big when he saw that printed out menu). Love ya lots, TKO.