Doing Valentine’s differently this year

But ladies, fear not – you can still have a romantic dinner although it will have to be at home this year.

Restaurants like Greenes and The Glass Curtain in McCurtain Street are already offering their award winning food for home ‘cooks’ – everything you need to create a restaurant style dish at home with instructions and all.

I can only imagine what Bryan McCarthy and Brian Murray have planned for the day of love! Kevin Aherne of Sage in Midleton has already launched a line of readymade dishes which are available at Bradley’s in North Main Street.

The Montenotte and Metropole hotels are offering takeaway afternoon tea if you don’t want to cook at all and for a more casual approach, the Rising Sons Brewery sells their beers now in cans and they make the tastiest pizzas to take home. If the city is out of reach for you, check out your local restaurants/hotels/cookery schools to check if they offer something – if not, it might be a great suggestion to create some additional revenue.

Mr T and I only went out once for Valentine’s Day and it wasn’t planned, we just went for a stroll around town and popped into Feed Your Senses (a now closed Spanish restaurant in the city centre) and had the most relaxed and beautiful late lunch someone could have asked for.

Last year, I wrote a few recipes to make for a laid back dinner and are easy to cook for any level but the flavours are great.

Starter would be stuffed mushrooms, the main could be a stuffed pasta bake and the dessert was an old-time favourite of mine: semolina pudding with poached fruit (trust me, it’s tasty and very easy to make).

Just pop over to biasasta.ie and click on the Valentine’s banner to get the recipes. I will try to create a new menu for this year that is just as easy to cook at home.

Do you really have to do something special? Not if you don’t want to. I think there is nothing worse than to have a ‘forced’ romantic day/evening just because it’s Valentine’s Day.

Saying that, I have already thrown in some gentle hints to Mr T about what to cook for me. And when I say gentle, I told him straight out just to be sure!

Before you ask, I have never cooked Valentine’s dinner for Mr T and I’m not planning to do so. Thankfully, the thought of me cooking for a change on Valentine’s hasn’t occurred to him yet (and here’s hoping that he doesn’t read this week’s column!).