Feast of St Valentines

First off, let me start by saying that I'm not a romantic person. I don't believe in celebrating Valentine's Day, paying outrageous prices for flowers or meals nor exchanging gifts. One shouldn't tell the people you love only on that one day.

However I wanted an excuse to kick in my cooking mojo so I thought I'd use the occasion to try out a couple new recipes. So this was what I prepared for the 2 loves of my life.

Despite a recent survey at opentable.com whereby the majority thinks the most romantic cuisine is French or Italian, I didn't want to do either. After our trip to Phuket, I wanted to re-create our vacation, so it was a full blown Thai meal.

The starter - Tod mun pla or Thai fish cakes. Using my cookie cutter, I even made them into heart shape hehe. Trust me, I'm really not romantic, I only had the patience to do 3 of them (one for each of us). I'll put the recipes on another post.

Pomelo is our current favorite fruit so I was really keen to do another Thai classic - Yam Som-O, spicy pomelo salad. The recipes I came across seem to vary quite a lot so I just adapted to our taste. It turned out good but not great - I still prefer yam woon sen or grilled beef salad.


For the main course, I did a red chicken curry with bamboo shoots. I personally prefer red duck curry but X is partial towards chicken curry so I accommodated him, just this once.


What's Valentine's Day without flowers - here's a pretty potted plant which was a gift from X's niece.....

.....champagne (any excuse to bring on the bubbly)

and chocolates from Pierre Chauvet

I've been meaning to buy these chocolates for X since trying them last summer but never got round to it. For a chocolatier here, they have a rather exotic selection which includes ingredients like sichuan pepper & ginger. So I did something out of character & presented X with a box of chocolates for Valentine's Day.

Regardless of how you're spending it today, I hope you're with the ones you love.