It was a typically cold February day, I was a junior in college, and it was the first time I was actually spending Valentine’s Day with someone I cared about. Michelle was beautiful; tall, slender, long wavy hair and a smile that lit up the room, and we ended up dating for a couple years and moved in together, though it didn’t take long, living under the same room to realize my goals and dreams were different from her’s.
“How about we celebrate when you get home, after class tonight,” I suggested.
“Sounds great baby,” she answered, smiling, “What do you have in mind?”
“It’s a secret!” I grinned. “Now get on with your day, so I can get on with this “secret”. I bantered back, trying to figure out how to make this night magical, and what this secret might be. She was out the door and I was nervous, looking at my clock realizing I only had a few hours to impress my beautiful Valentine, and I had nothing. Then it came to me….Dinner! My nervousness, sweating, and tension turned into, “That’s it! I’ll impress her with an awesome dinner! So what if I’ve never done this before,” I thought to myself, psyching myself up while wiping the sweat from my chin. “I can do this!”
Michelle out of sight, I scurried out the back door and straight for my car. I bustled into the grocery store lot and screeched into a parking spot, where all around, were men, like myself walking back to their cars with hands full of flowers, cards, chocolates, and those of us who were cooking, had cooking ingredients as well. My first stop was the international aisle where I scooped up a box of penne. I then picked up some salad dressing, parmesan cheese, and wandered helplessly over to the produce section where I needed tomatoes(fortunately several were beautifully red), a red onion, garlic, baby spinach, an assortment of berries, a few handfuls of walnuts and a number of other essentials to round out the meal. I stopped by the meat counter to get some beef for my tartare, and it appeared all of the good cuts were taken – I settled for a fatty handful of tenderloin medallions. I needed shrimp for my pasta, so I wandered over to the seafood market and snatched a bag of large, precooked cocktail shrimp(something I would never do at this point in my career), and I was reminded of Michelle’s inherent, ocean brined love affair with seafood, having grown up on the Florida Panhandle. I then hustled over to the checkout line with some Roses, but not before the adorable lady in the floral department lectured me on selecting flowers, and how to keep them alive, things I knew from my junior year of high school when I spent the summer gardening, thus learning more than I ever thought imaginable about flowers, plants, shrubs and weeds. Nevertheless, I thanked her for her infinite wisdom, checked out and hurried home.
The clock was ticking and it was time to get real in the kitchen, to make it happen. Car parked, my arms weighed down by ridiculous amounts of bags filled with props and groceries which were cutting off the circulation in my wrists by the time I made it to the kitchen counter. Just as carefully as I was in selecting those tomatoes, I retrieved the contents from the bags, one ingredient at a time, as if I were handling precious jewels. I located the cutting board, and a knife, and it was time to get to work.
Adrenaline was running through my veins. I looked at all of my ingredients knowing I had more than I would know what to do with, but at the time I couldn’t take a chance, but please, keep in mind, that I was a college kid, with no formal culinary training, but a deep desire and love affair with food….and an ego the size of Mt. Everest. This was my chance to show her what I was made of. I loved cooking and had cooked for myself and my buddies numerous times, but this was different. I was cooking for a date, which was akin to bringing a girl home to meet my parents… She had to be worth it and Michelle definitely was. The clock was still ticking, seemingly fasten than before, and I was nowhere near finished, with just over an hour and a half until she were to return. And so, pen to paper, I began sketching out my menu as follows:
First Course: Spinach Salad with Roma tomatoes, onions, walnuts and a store bought bleu cheese vinaigrette.
Second: Beef Tartare with Lemon-Dijon Aioli
Main: Shrimp Alfredo with Penne Pasta and roasted red peppers
Dessert: Gran Marnier macerated berries.
Cocktail: Kir Royale
Where to start? In the mixing bowls went the berries, a spoonful of sugar and a generous dash of Gran Marnier…to ensure good mood. Into the fridge it went. Dessert, done! A corroded, wooden bowl, passed down from my grandmother to my Mom, to me- was the perfect vessel for a salad of fresh baby spinach, chopped vine-ripened tomatoes, and rich, crunchy walnuts. A great salad and story too! Covered with plastic wrap, bottled bleu cheese vinaigrette on top (even early on I knew mis-en-place!), shifting a few things around, I pushed the bowl gently into the refrigerator, tilting it ever so slightly, nestling it between a box of wine and stale beer, which sadly dominated this college student’s fridge. Prep work, done!
Now 5:30, I had one hour, and hadn’t even begun to address the romantic part of this evening – this was surely make tonight unforgettable. I placed the circular dining room table that adequately sat two people, in the living room, and cleared out the rest. I found some appropriately colored red linens to hide stains that accumulated on the table over the course of our college careers, dressed the table with silverware, and placed a small vase of flowers and a couple of dimly lit sconces to accent our romantic occasion. Five dozen roses began taking their places throughout the room, which I aligned in circular patterns, placing tea lights in-between each, lighting them, so that when she arrived the room would be gloriously illuminated. I hustled lighting the candles, and my once excited sweating turned back into nervousness as I scurried, getting everything into place. I still had to make the tartare and cook the entree portion of the meal and cue the music that we would be listening to that evening, which was a list of meaningful songs that defined our time together.
I heated some water, salted it and emptied a box of penne into the rolling boil. I then chopped up some garlic and onion – sweated them in some butter with thyme and oregano and when the contents of the pan were translucent and the aroma otherworldly I eyeballed a tablespoon of flour, made a roux, stirred some milk into it and finished it with parmesan cheese. It looked beautiful. I bought pre-cooked jumbo cocktail shrimp that needed a mere warming and they would be ready to go(something I would never do this day and age). Meanwhile, I began working on the Beef tartare, by mincing the tenderloin and tossing it with some left over chopped onion, garlic, herbs, and then delicately scooped some mayo, Dijon mustard, and squeezed some lemon juice, ensuring no seeds made their way into the mixture. I finally added an egg yolk, tossed the mixture, molded it, cylindrically and symmetrically on the plate, finished it with some chopped capers, and freshly grated parmesan cheese and relocated the plate to the fridge, until it was time for dinner. The apartment door swung open at the very instant the refrigerator door sealed shut.
This was single handedly the worst meal I ever made. By the end of the night we were stumbling drunk because the food was so unpalatable aside from a passable salad, and a pretty decent beef tartare. But the high notes were overshadowed by the fact that I used Milk for the pasta sauce which had expired a month prior, and that sour, rotten smell of milk, to this day has me emotionally distraught. As a result, we didn’t eat more than two bites, well, aside from the dessert, which was soaking in booze – that couldn’t have helped our lack of sobriety.
Nevertheless, we enjoyed ourselves, talked about our lives together, while drinking the Kir Royales, dancing to the music that went on to be the soundtrack of our relationship, as the candles in the room slowly melted their way into the carpet, creating flames, throughout the apartment. The smoke alarm went off, we doused the carpet in water, and what could have been a serious calamity, was narrowly avoided, though wax had now embedded itself into various locations throughout the room. I thought she was going to kill me. The fire department came and left, patting me on the back, acknowledging my embarrassment, as did her deposit for the apartment, in what turned out to be an unforgettable night.
So, my first Valentine’s Day with a girlfriend, or atleast one I truly cared for was defined by a horrific meal and followed with a fire that could’ve burned the building down. My intentions were good, which was my salvation, and it’s a night I can look back on and laugh, now. Especially seeing as, I spent the remainder of the night holding her hair back as she vehemently vomited into the toilet, a byproduct of her intoxication. What a night. I’m pretty sure she didn’t remember much of that night, if anything. Trust me, this is a good thing.
That night taught me this:
Lesson #1: Never use pre-cooked shrimp in a warm dish. Precooked shrimp are called “Cocktail Shrimp”. Dip them in cocktail sauce, remoulade, or squeeze some lemon over them – just don’t reheat them.
Lesson #2: Before use, always check the expiration date on dairy products. I REPEAT, CHECK THE EXPIRATION DATE. If you are more than a few days past the expiration date, get rid of it!
Lesson #3: Avoid putting burning plastic directly on carpet. It will be only a matter of time before something bad happens.
Lesson # 4: Stop feeding your date booze, if she didn’t like what you fixed her, especially if she is in college. College girls have notoriously low tolerances for alcohol.
So, I suppose we have to start somewhere, and for me I didn’t have anywhere to go but up, and that I did. I continued watching my cooking shows, continued cooking in my home kitchen, and continued to read and learn what I could, since I rarely spent any time working on homework. So here I am 8 or 9 years later, and life has moved on, I have cooked for tons of girls, most of whom have been incredibly impressed, and find myself now, getting pleasure out of making people happy through food. I have also become a believer in the notion that every story has a moral, which is the 5th lesson that night taught me, though it took me five years or more to come to this conclusion. And it is this:
Lesson #5: Ignore the lessons above – find out for yourself, and it will all work out. If it doesn’t, now that you have bought this book, you can blame it on me – just don’t give her my email address.
So, as I look back at my life, and my life in food, and specifically that Valentine’s Day, let’s just say, that things ended, well, special, and memorable – how can you not look back and laugh at a flaming carpet, a soured alfredo sauce and rubbery shrimp. She was beautiful, I was embarrassed, and she blacked out, barely remembering any of it. Sounds like a win to me.
