My Valentine's Dinner

So this year I decided to cook dinner for my boyfriend for Valentine's Day.

On The Menu:

Blood Orange, Roasted Beets, Goat Cheese & Spinach Salad
Roasted Asparagus with Lemon-Garlic Butter
Pan-Sauteed Duck Breast with Berries
Chocolate Chip Cookie & Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiches

So I have been playing around a lot with my
enormous bag of blood oranges from Trader Joe's...
I wanted to make my salad with ricotta salata, but it is a trek to the North End to buy it, so I decided to switch things up a bit to accommodate what I could get in my neighborhood.

Blood Orange, Roasted Beets, Goat Cheese & Spinach Salad

Ingredients:
1 can roasted beets (not pickled), rinsed well with water and drained
3 blood oranges
1 shallot
2 tablespoons champagne vinegar
2 tablespoons evoo
2 ounces goat cheese
1 cup packed spinach, rinsed and dried

Mince shallot and place in deep Tupperware dish. Add vinegar, olive oil and juice of 1 blood orange. Whisk together. Slice beets into 1/4 inch thick discs. Add to vinaigrette. Slice blood oranges into round discs horizontally. Slice away peel. Place blood orange circles above beets. To serve, place spinach on top of salad plate. Add beets and oranges to spinach. Drizzle a little of the remaining vinaigrette. Crumble goat cheese to salad, and serve.



While the duck tasted delicious-I couldn't get a good photo of it to save my life.

Luckily, taste trumps appearance, at least it did last night.

You can check out an old post
for my Duck Breasts with Berry Sauce
recipe.




For dessert, I made my favorite
Chocolate Chip Cookies
and served them as an ice cream sandwich.