So about that dinner two nights ago: It seems that a classic home-cooked dinner really can make for the perfect date. My boyfriend and I made penne pasta with tofu and broccoli tossed in an almond tomato sauce. The recipe, of course, came from my new Food Network Magazine.
When we were trying to figure out what to do Friday night, we tossed around typical ideas like seeing a movie at the theater. But when my boyfriend suggested making dinner at his house, that was the end of our discussion. The foodie inside of me geeked out for a moment at the thought of actually making use of my new magazine so soon - especially with someone that I love spending time with.
Though we chose a recipe based on the fact that most of the ingredients were already in his refrigerator, we still had to make a Publix run. Searching for the ingredients, and finding them impressively quickly, was fun. We grabbed blanched almonds, frozen microwaveable broccoli (to make things easier), canned whole tomatoes and a few other items.
We also encountered Crazy Apples during our trip. Crazy Apples are essentially flavored apples, which allegedly are neither genetically modified nor poked and prodded to add in the flavoring. This blog is dedicated to gushing about food I love (because the truth is, there's little that I don't), so I won't go into what we personally thought of them. But check out the company's website. It's a pretty interesting concept, to say the least.
We made it out of Publix in relatively good time and got cooking. We made the sauce by toasting the almonds and chopping them in a food processor, along with garlic, basil (grown fresh from a plant sitting on his kitchen windowsill!), olive oil and pureed tomato. Combining that with whole wheat penne pasta, broccoli and tofu makes for an easy dinner, but it took a tad more effort than you'd imagine, considering we're total amateurs.
Just to touch on the tofu - I'm not typically a fan. Tofu is strange and mushy and rather flavorless. But we wanted to add protein to our meal and he had some in the fridge. So I told my boyfriend that it was up to him to cook it right, or face the consequences. Before fully reading through the recipe and understanding the Italian nature of the dish (a lesson learned), we decided to marinate the tofu in an Asian sauce and add a sesame seed coating before grilling it. So the dish turned into an Italian-Asian fusion pasta with a coarse almond texture and sharp garlicky bite. It was an unintended result that turned out well. Who really ever sticks to the actual recipe anyway?
You can check out the original pasta recipe from Food Network here. Ours looked nothing like that - it was quite a mess honestly. But it definitely tasted better than that pasta even looks, in my opinion.
For dessert, we surprised his mom and brother with strawberries and chocolate sauce. This was no ordinary melted chocolate; we used dark baker's chocolate, heavy whipping cream, butter and vanilla extract. The chocolate sauce was rich and delicious. (Note: The recipe in the magazine calls for 3 oz. of chocolate but 4 oz. of cream. That didn't quite work out, so if you plan on trying it, I suggest an extra ounce of chocolate!)
The best part of the dessert? Adding in a sliced bubble-gum-flavored Crazy Apple and serving it to his mom and brother without them knowing the truth. (This is why I mentioned them before.) They didn't really notice the difference because of the chocolate dip but it was still pretty silly and sneaky. Once we told them, they identified the subtle hint of bubble gum. If nothing else, the apple offered a few good laughs.
I'll touch on Saturday's crazy country-style dinner this week. But I hope to write more about nights like these (making food from the intriguing recipes in my magazine) soon too. I hope I have the time. Fingers crossed.
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