Happy Anniversary to Us!!!
Okay, technically it's not until Friday, but we have to be up and out of the house early on Saturday, so a fancy meal on Friday night didn't seem wise. And Josh has to conduct a "technical interview" with some folks in India at 10:00 at night on Thursday, so drink wasn't in a good choice for Thursday either. Really, Date Night is on Wednesday so this made it the most obvious choice.
I've been planning this meal for weeks now. I had actually planned two different meals, but this is the one that won out in the end. I'm glad this was the choice I made...Josh called it the "best meal he's had...in or out...in some time." He called it restaurant worthy. I made some of his favorite things, and he said they were exactly what they were supposed to be. He orders these things out with great frequency, so I think he's qualified to make these judgments.
So you want to know what this meal was, right?
Cocktails and Appetizer
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| Not my photo...I forgot to take one. This is what the drink looked like. |
This cocktail is called the Boulevardier. It is described as "bastard child of a Manhattan and a Negroni." That went well with my whole menu plan. It contains 2 oz of bourbon or rye whiskey (I did 1 oz of each), 1 oz of Campari, and 1 oz of sweet vermouth. It as a tasty little concoction.
With the cocktails, I made this
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| Again, I forgot to take to a picture. This looks better than mine anyway. :-) |
Salad
My husband loves, I mean LOVES Caesar salad. Me? I'm not too fond of it. Raw egg and anchovies aren't my thing. But I can find and follow recipes. So did.
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| Ingredients for the dressing and salad. |
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| Josh's Caesar salad. This picture was taken before I dressed it and add the 4 anchovy filets. |
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| My Panzanella. Italian "bread salad". It was yummy, but I couldn't finish it. |
Did you notice the croutons in the salads? You should. I made them. Easy peasy and super delicious.I did not use the fresh parsley in the recipe, but subbed some Italian seasoning blend.
It's a good thing I made the croutons. It made a great vehicle to taste....
Main Course
my tomato sauce! Have you figured out that Italian was the theme of this week's Date Night.
Now this was not a Spaghetti and Meatballs kind of Italian. This was Chicken Parmesan. The only alteration that I made to the recipe was to use olive oil instead of vegetable and I added a Tbs of butter. It was really good.
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| Chicken before adding sauce and cheeses. |
I did not have garlic bread. I did have the spaghetti though.
Dessert
Ahhh dessert. For this I have many pictures.
I made Panna Cotta. This is basically an eggless custard. But I didn't want to make just chocolate panna cotta or just vanilla panna cotta. No. That would have been too easy. I wanted to do both. I wanted this
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| This is actually MY dessert. I took the picture and everything. |
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| See the layesr? |
I poured the custard from the saucepan to a measuring cup and then from the measuring cup to my stemless cocktail glasses nestled in a loaf pan. Into the fridge and then wait.
They were chilling in the fridge by 9.
At 12 I added the vanilla.
At 3:30 or so I added the raspberrries.
As I said at the start, I've been planning this meal for weeks. After all, you only have 1 10th anniversary. I used pinterest to do my searching. I loved it. I could pin and compare recipes very easily and pull them up on my i-pad in the kitchen for cooking.
This bring this installment of Date Night to a close.
happy cooking
