dispatch no. 10: Valentine's Day
love is in the air | seeing red (sauce + salad) | behold the cranberry
in the mood ;-) | the good old (valentine’s) days | red salad, red sauce ! | behold the cranberry!
stories + thoughts
At this point in my life, i’ve seen quite a few Valentine’s Days. call it a corny holiday, if it’s about celebrating love, i am happily here for it, in all its iterations.
In my mind, Valentine’s Day doesn’t always have to be all steamy romance, in fact i’ve probably loved celebrating it the most with my young (and not so young) kids throughout their childhoods. back in the day, every year on February 14 my children would wake up in their beds delighted to be covered in little paper hearts cut out of tissue paper + colorful pages of magazines + The Times that i sprinkled on them the night before as they were sleeping. i’d have heart-shaped french toast or heart-shaped cream biscuits with berries and whipped cream at their places on our Valentines’ Day breakfast table which was covered with a pale pink 1940s vintage tablecloth imprinted with a white snow scene and set with red gingham cloth napkins. between potted purple hyacinths and vases of red and pink tulips i would sprinkle conversation heart candies, sugared gummy hearts and more of the little hand-cut paper hearts, a selection of handmade and store bought cards, envelopes decorated with their initials and still more hearts drawn with arrows, propped up at their places. en route to school, my little cherubs would find even more tiny paper hearts in their pockets, probably leaving a little trail of love behind their boot tracks in the snow, the heart-shaped tea sandwiches, strawberries and red-sprinkled sugar cookies in their lunchboxes as yet undiscovered. when they were still little (before they were “too old” to make their own valentines and insisted on store bought ones for their friends + teachers + school bus drivers), our house was a flurry of pre-valentine activity — glue and construction paper and lacy paper doilies and paint and scissors and crayons and glitter covering every inch of the wooden kitchen table. i would find glittery and tiny heart-shaped paper evidence of Valentine’s Day, under rugs and behind bureaus, for months to come.
Over the years, with the kids grown up and off, when my Valentine and I haven’t gone out for dinner on Valentine’s Day and I’m cooking, i’ve never really had a set menu, like some people do — a go-to to celebrate the Day of Love and Romance — that I’ve repeated again and again. at different times i’ve featured luscious seafood dishes like bouillabaisse or lobster risotto, sultry wine-y dishes like boeuf bourgignon or coq au vin. decadent dark chocolate has often figured in for dessert, an obvious choice. plump slippery oysters on the half shell are always celebratory (and always sexy) and always set the mood — i can remember a long ago Valentine’s Day on an NYC rooftop with nothing but a couple dozen briny beauties on a paper plate and a bottle of pink champagne — in other words, more than enough. i just might have sprinkled cut-out paper hearts over sleeping sweethearts in those days too ;-).
This year, though, i’ve gone down a whole different path. maybe it was the gift of ground venison from a local hunter, or maybe i finally came to understand that The Lady and The Tramp had it right all along — a tangle of slick spaghetti with a lusty deep red sauce and big juicy succulent meatballs unleashes the ardor in all of us!
and i’m pretty sure my forever Valentine will wholeHEARTedly agree. :-).
Spaghetti with slow-cooked Tomato Sauce + Venison Meatballs !
this is a straightforward recipe without a zillion components or steps. the secret ingredient here is time, and just like with any relationship, sometimes the slow patient way pays off in the long run ;-). as i mention in the recipe itself, the meatballs obviously do not need to be made with venison. i offer alternatives (like turkey!) and tweaks, but just so you know all the meats i use here were locally sourced.
i like a dried spaghetti for this recipe as it helps to create that starchy cooking water to add to the dish at the end, and i really love Martellibrand, introduced to me by my son Walker, an arbiter of all things good taste ;-). but use whatever you have or already like. i know this recipe is getting to you with not a lot of time to spare if you want to make it for Valentine’s Day (do it!) but a quick trip to the grocery store and some quality time on the stove will garner happy results on the Valentine’s Day table.
Rosy Red salad !
sometimes it’s just fun (and challenging) to be “theme-y”, and Valentine’s Day is an easy target. what’s more, even in February in the Northeast, a red salad does NOT need to rely on out-of-season tomatoes or raspberries to be festive.
just think of the possibilities! everything i’ve listed is available HERE (depending on where you are) and NOW:
→ beautiful magenta-striped Radicchio, Treviso, and Tardivo; cherry-pink chicory like la Rosa del Veneto — just the name makes your heart beat faster !! — pink lettuce like Lolla Rossa, the almost-black-red coaxial leaves of Salanova lettuce, dense heads of red cabbage, purple-veined Japanese Giant red mustard greens, Red Russian kale, red onion (pickled or raw), darkest Bull’s Blood or pink-striped Chioggia beets, Pink Lady apples, Cherry Belle radish, Pusa Jamuni purple daikon… and i’m sure there’s more i’m not thinking of.
(I’ve purposely listed some favorite varieties in case you want to search for the seeds ! just some of the seed companies i LOVE: Fruition Seeds, Adaptive Seeds, High Mowing Seeds, Hudson Valley Seed Co., Fedco Seeds, Uprising Seeds and of course so many more …)
and if i was living where fresh edible flowers were currently growing, i would certainly be adding some red and pink and purple ones to my salad!
this salad platter begins with a “schmear” on a plate or platter of fresh goat cheese blended with a little cream and olive oil in the food processor, a bit of pink salt (The Salt!), a splash of water to make it smear-able and a spoonful or two of pureed cooked beetroot.
the vinaigrette combines red wine vinegar, sherry vinegar, blood orange juice, very good olive oil ( Pineapple Collaborative’s The Olive Oil! in a pink tin no less ;-) and pink salt ( Pineapple Collaborative’s The Salt!).
i’ve included beets (marinated in the vinaigrette for a few minutes), blood orange slices, pink lady apple slices and a shower of chopped roasted hazelnuts and ground pink peppercorns.
the beautiful leaves (from Beetlebung Farm here on the island) are left whole as this salad is meant to be shared with a friend or a lover and eaten messily with your hands, the leaves dragged through the creamy beet-y chevre. plus the leaves are too pretty to mess with them! i bet even your kids would eat this salad if they get to eat it with their hands and find the hidden fruit ;-).
Cranberry + Blood Orange Curd Tart !
now that we live in The Land of the Cranberry, i am paying more attention to this fabulous unsung fruit. other than at Thanksgiving, alongside our once-a-year roast turkey, we ignore the cranberry. now, i don’t think anyone loves a strawberry like i do, but i love juicy red JUNE strawberries, not the hard white-centered ones inevitably available at the supermarket from too far away during the winter months. i am here to say “move aside, out-of-season strawberry, the cranberry is the new kid in town” — AND she is perfectly suited to stop the show on Valentine’s Day.
case in point: a sweet and tangy cranberry curd tart, with the addition of very-in-season-just-not-here blood orange zest + juice. i almost always make exceptions for citrus regardless of my hardcore locavore stance — it’s just too integral to my cooking. (nobody’s perfect ;-). and again, it is deliciously citrus season right now!
the hazelnut crust made with (pre-roasted!) hazelnuts that hail from a family farm in Oregon, Hopville Farms, have been a new discovery for me — several of the farm stands on the island carry their excellent hazelnuts. so, they are sort of in their own category of from farm-to-farm-to-table, right?
the tart is pure heaven on its own but the garnishes are a fun + playful touch — indicating what’s at the heart (sorry ;-) of the tart. (note: the technique for sugaring the cranberries and citrus peel is included in the attached recipe.) but it also begged for something from the flower kingdom and i was wishing my scented geraniums were blooming right now. but wait! i remembered that i had a tea i’d made from my Connecticut garden, with dried flower petals among the leaves, so i picked out the rosy-colored ones to add to my garnish. ta-da!
One of my late mom’s best friends passed away recently. we stayed in touch up until then and i’ll always think of finding her at the piano in our dining room when i would ride my bike home after school as a kid. almost inevitably, she’d be playing and singing one of my mom’s favorite songs,
I Wish You Love.
I wish you bluebirds in the spring
To give your heart a song to sing
And then a kiss, oh, but more than this
I wish you love
And in July a lemonade to cool you in some leafy glade
I wish you health, oh, and more than wealth
I wish you love
My breaking heart and I agree that you and I will never be
So with my best, my very best, I am setting you free
Oh, honey
I wish you shelter from the storm
A cozy fire to, to keep you warm
But most of all when snowflakes fall
I wish you love
But most of all when snowflakes fall
I wish you love
…and i do.
thank you, as ever, for reading.
with a Chef’s Kiss from me to you or, in the classic sign-off of my forever “Galentine” Sandra, smooches!
x
phoebe
p.s. a number of you who read my Dispatches have kindly sent me comments by way of Instagram or text message or email — and i am honored and delighted when you do — but if i may make a humble request: if you could leave your comments right here on Substack at the end of my Dispatches (a number of you have + do, thank you!), then other people who would possibly consider reading my newsletters might be inspired to do so by your comments. thank you for considering sharing the love and spreading the word.
The salad has given me inspiration to incorporate more radicchio in my salads. Love it, and using blood oranges while they’re in season. So much great citrus this year. Thank you for the delicious recipes and inspiration to cook!
The perfect Valentine’s meal !! 💘💘💘