Sangamon Cooks: V-Day Dinner

Instead of going out for dinner on Valentine's Day, we decided to cook at home. We both would rather go out to dinner on a night where the restaurant isn't filled with couples that are forced to try and be romantic. and we like the food we make at home too! We got some fabulous scallops at L.Isaacson & Stein for the main course and we knew that we needed some yummy dessert so we went to Blommers chocolate shop and bought some delicious chocolate to make molten cake with....yum yum yum. Oh and of course we needed some wine so we went to Randolph Wine Cellers and picked out a few bottles. It was nice that the day we went in they had a small tasting table. Ok on to the recipe.

Scallops with Clementine's, Capers & Cauliflower Puree

1 head cauliflower trimmed and cut into florets
Salt and ground pepper
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 dozen bay scallops, cleaned
1 lemon juiced
4 Clementine's
2 tablespoons capers, drained
2 tablespoons flat-leaf parsley

First you want to bring a pot of water to boil with a little dash of salt. Then you can cut and clean the cauliflower into florets. When the pot is ready throw the cauliflower in and cook for about 8 minutes.

When done strain and then you should place in a food processor to puree. We don't have a food processor so we used the blender, which actually worked just fine. Once pureed you should add in 2 tablespoons of butter and salt and pepper to taste. Then you can set aside and keep it warm.

Now you can heat up your pan with the remaining butter and olive oil. Season the scallops with a little salt and pepper and when the pan is hot slide them in. They cook pretty fast about 2 minutes on each side. You want them to get nice and carmalized on the top and bottom.

You can now get out your plates for dinner and put a little of the cauliflower on each plate, when the scallops are done you can divide them up equally and place on top of the puree.

Now you will want to make the sauce for the top. You want to deglaze the pan with Lemon juice and then add the clementine's and capers. Heat through and then pour on top of the capers and serve.

The delicious wine that we had with our dinner

now on to the best part.....dessert.

Chocolate Explosion

Above is the chocolate that we bought at Blommers, it was so tasty. We never knew how easy it was to make chocolate molten cake. Well...except the part of flipping them out of the pan. Next time we are going to use little ramekins. We used a muffin tin, which actually was just the right size, but we had a hard time flipping them out of it.

Chocolate Molten Cake

1/2 cup unsalted butter, plus more to butter the molds
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, preferably Valrhona
2 eggs
2 egg yolks
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons flour, plus more for dusting

First you want to heat the chocolate and butter together in a double boiler. We don't have one so we put a glass bowl inside a pot. It worked just fine.

While that is melting you want to beat the eggs, egg yolks and the sugar in a separate bowl. You will mix this into the chocolate once it is melted and then add in the flour, until it is all combined.

You will now need to butter and lightly dust your ramekins with flour. You man want to do this twice, to make sure you can get the little chocolate buggers out of the ramekins. Now you can pour the batter into the ramekins.

You can wait to bake until you are ready to serve.

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees and bake them for about 6 minutes. When they are done flip them and let sit for about 10 seconds and then lift the mold off and serve! We topped ours with a little coffee ice cream and raspberries.