And I Won't Forget What I Did For Love

We celebrated Valentine's Day on Sunday because we're both so grouchy on Mondays.  I spent time finding just the right recipes that were both romantic and new.  I settled on French Onion Soup with Loads of Thyme and Griant Gruyere Crostini and Steak with Parmessan Butter and Balsamic Glaze atop Arugula Salad.  I found the recipes on Epicurious.com as always.  I love that site!

I got off work wondering if I bit off more than I could chew.  The night before I had slight cupcake fail with that Guava undertaking. But I did prep work by marinated the steak overnight. I bought all the ingredients which included the Gruyere cheese, ciabatta bread, the Sweet Vidalia onions, the fresh thyme and bay leaves ahead of time.  Magically we had a good bottle of white wine in the house.

On paper both recipes sounded fairly fast and easy, especially the salad.  I was supposed to use rib eye but that's not in the budget so I heavily marinated a london broiler overnight and it proved to do quite well, cut it against the grain and it was tender and delicious. 

But cutting five huge onions thin-sliced takes a good amount of time.  In hindsight I should have used the processor.  Letting the onions get amber colored, takes a good 40 minutes.  Then after you add the wine and broth, its another half hour before you get it under the broiler.  But relatively, this is a simple soup to make. I think you just need to do it right and use good wine and cheese.  And if you follow the recipe, it is SPECTACULAR!  This soup was as good as I ever had in a nice restaurant and the Vidalia onions are so amazingly sweet. 

Once I charred the steak and got a quick broil on it, the sauce and salad was very quick to put together. 

Since the soup took a bit longer than I expected, I held P off with a plate of sliced Red Bartlett Pears, bread & Stilton cheese. 

Now let me tell you, P was busy playing on-line poker through much of my love-fest and he was slightly out of hand when he actually brought the laptop to the table..not kidding.  Yeah.  Mainly, I just wanted to do it.  I made an amazing soup that was better than I had hoped and the salad was everything good on a plate - steak, lemons, arugula, parmessan shavings and I snuck in some pepperoncini peppers.   Who needs romance, affection and attention?  Uh...