Holidays come color-coded. Orange and black tell us it’s Halloween. Red and green say Christmas. Soon emerald leprechauns and bagels will be announcing St Patrick’s Day. And of course, right now we have red and pink cupcakes and shiny red boxes of candy for celebrating Valentine’s Day.
It’s easy to spot the inspiration of these emblematic colors in the red berries and green leaves of Christmas holly, the green landscapes of Ireland, and in the throbbing red hearts occasioned by Valentine passions. But going so far as to color food with symbolic tints is a relatively new tradition.
Though medieval cooks had colored food yellow with saffron, green with spinach juice, and red with sandalwood just to make it look fancy, making whole meals of foods of one color or dying food with holiday colors was a 19th-century idea. It became popular when middle-class women had servants to do the basic cooking, so they could spend their own time on impressive presentations.
Fannie Farmer was an enthusiastic proponent. Head of the Boston Cooking School and author of the runaway bestseller Boston Cooking School Cookbook, she loved nothing better than prettifying her dishes with intricate garnishes or embellishments. In her books and newspaper articles she highlighted colors, calling a dessert made with pomegranate ice cream Cardinal Mousse, for example, and creating pink and red heart-shaped dishes such Heart’s-Ache Pudding and Lovers’ Sandwiches for Valentine’s Day.
Today sandwiches and other savory foods pale into insignificance as Valentine’s Day fare compared to sweet treats. The idea of giving sweets to the sweet occurs in the earliest references to Valentine’s as a celebration of lovers, which comes from medieval England and France. Valentine cards came later, also from England. And chocolate as the most seductive of sweet pleasures is an even later arrival. In its Central American homeland and during its first centuries in Europe and America, chocolate was always consumed as a drink. Compressed chocolate solids were gritty and not especially appetizing so chocolate candies were unknown until the 19th century when Dutch and Swiss chocolate developed ways to separate cocoa butter from cocoa solids, and then to remix them to make the satiny smooth eating chocolate that’s now a favorite indulgence. The English chocolate company Cadbury’s was the first one to promote gifts of chocolate on Valentine’s Day.
If we want to buck the sweet tradition of Valentine’s Day we can easily find foods that naturally come in dazzling red. Tomatoes and red peppers are examples. These wouldn’t have been available in midwinter in the 19th century when red foods for Valentine’s Day were mostly tinted by artificial colors. Neither would raspberries or strawberries, which very handily are also naturally heart-shaped. All these are now available courtesy of long-distance refrigerated transportation, so even if you want to eat locally as much as possible, a red exception might be made for a Valentine’s supper and dessert
This week’s recipes form a menu featuring the heart shapes and the red foods of the day. No one wants to spend the evening feeling too full from feasting so these dishes are fairly light — as long as you don’t have seconds of the luscious Chocolate Cloud Cake.
Made with store-bought puff pastry and cut with a heart-shaped cookie cutter, these pre-dinner nibbles are easy to make — yet tempting. Topping with different kinds of seeds adds eye appeal as well as flavor, but it’s an option rather than a necessity.
½ cup grated Parmesan
½ cup grated Cheddar
½ teaspoon mild paprika
½ teaspoon caraway or cumin or fennel seeds (optional)
small pinch cayenne
1 sheet puff pastry (7 to 9 ounces depending on brand)
1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon milk or water
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment or a silicon mat, or grease and flour it. In a bowl mix the Parmesan and Cheddar cheeses with the paprika, and the cayenne. Roll out the pastry to a rectangle roughly 10 by 12 inches and
1/8-th-inch thick. Brush with some the egg and milk mixture then sprinkle on the cheese mixture and a few seeds if you are using them. Fold the pastry in half longways, pressing the edges together, and using your rolling pin to press the cheese into the pastry. Re-roll it to 1/8- th-inch thick. Cut out with a heart shaped cutter and place on the baking sheet. If you like, dab a little of the egg and milk mixture onto the center of each heart and sprinkle a few seeds on top, pressing them in lightly with your fingers.
Bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden and puffed. Serve at room temperature or reheated – covered with foil – in a 350-degree oven.
With its long coastline of innumerable bays, Greece has many varieties of fish and seafood. They all turn up in the country’s tavernas, and while there are many favorites and styles of cooking, fish plaki – that is served under a thick blanket of tomatoes and onions — is a favorite, and no fish benefits more from this treatment than swordfish. Other firm fish such as monkfish or halibut could also be used.
2 pieces swordfish, about 8 ounces each
Juice of 1 lemon plus another lemon for serving
Salt and pepper
1 large onion, peeled, halved and thinly sliced
2-3 large tomatoes, peeled and diced
½ cup olive oil
½ cup chopped parsley plus sprigs for garnish
1 small cinnamon stick
2 tablespoons snipped dill (optional)
1 teaspoon honey or sugar (optional)
Wash the fish. If using whole fish make 3 or 4 slashes through the skin. Put the fish on a plate in a single layer. Squeeze the lemon juice over them. (To get as much juice as possible out of the lemons, warm them in an oven, or make a cut in the skin then microwave for 20-30 seconds. Let cool a bit before squeezing in case the juice is hot enough to scald).
Season the fish with salt and pepper. Heat the oil in a pan large enough to hold the fish in a single layer — a sauté pan for example — and cook the onion slices in it for 5-6 minutes. Add the tomatoes, parsley, dill (if using) and the cinnamon stick. Season lightly with salt. Cook gently for 10-15 minutes. Taste and add the honey or sugar if it seems too tart or the flavors have not blended.
Wash the fish. Put the fish on a plate in a single layer. Squeeze the lemon juice over them. (To get as much juice as possible out of the lemons, warm them in an oven, or make a cut in the skin then microwave for 20-30 seconds. Let cool a bit before squeezing in case the juice is hot enough to scald). Season the fish with salt and pepper. Heat the oil in a pan large enough to hold the fish in a single layer – a sauté pan for example — and cook the onion slices in it for 5-6 minutes. Add the tomatoes, parsley, dill (if using) and the cinnamon stick. Season lightly with salt. Cook gently for 10-15 minutes. Taste and add the honey or sugar if it seems too tart or the flavors have not blended. Now add the fish pieces to the pan, and spoon the sauce over them. Cover and cook gently for 10-15 minutes or until the fish is opaque all through. Serve hot with parsley or dill to garnish.
The purply-magenta color of beets set off in this recipe with passion-red pomegranate seeds fill out the Valentine palette. Beets are a popular vegetable in Greece, and pomegranates often grow wild there, so this is a fitting accompaniment to a Greek fish dish.
4 medium beets (about 1 pound or a bit more)
1 pomegranate
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon red-wine vinegar
Salt to taste
Put the beets in a saucepan, cover with water and simmer until the beets can be easily pierced with a fork or knife. Timing depends on size with small ones taking about 30 minutes and large ones an hour. Let cool to room temperature. (You can do this step and leave the beets several hours or overnight if you like.)
A few minutes before serving, cut the pomegranate in half. Hold each half in turn over a sieve sitting on top of a bowl. Sharply rap the skin side of the pomegranate with a wooden spoon. This will loosen most of the arils — they are the things we call seeds — and they and the juice will fall into the sieve.
Remove any still sticking to the skin and add them. Let them drain and pick off any bits of white skin still attached to them. Set them aside.
Combine any juice collected in the bowl with the olive oil and the vinegar to make a dressing.
To make the salad, peel and dice the beets. Toss them with the dressing and season lightly with salt. Add about a third of the pomegranate arils, and arrange the mixture on a platter. Scatter the remaining arils over the top.
Chocolate desserts can be heavy, but this cloud of mousse reclining on its airy sponge-cake bed seems light enough to float away. It’s the perfect cake for any special occasion, and easy to make. It needs to rest overnight or for at least eight hours, so it must be made ahead of time, which means that you have no fuss and bother on the day you want to serve it. This recipe is good for a family celebration of Valentine’s Day because it makes several portions.
For the cake
¼ cup sugar
2 eggs at room temperature
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup cake flour
2 tablespoons butter
1 ounce dark chocolate (72 percent cocoa butter)
1/8 cup Grand Marnier
For the Chocolate Cloud
3 cups heavy cream
½ cup sugar
1 1/3 cups cocoa powder
1 stick unsalted butter
Start by making the cake. Turn the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9-inch springform pan and line the bottom with 2 sheets of parchment paper.
Warm the mixing bowl of an electric mixer by filling it with very hot water and letting it stand for a minute or so until it has warmed up. Empty and dry it, and then put in the sugar, eggs and vanilla extract.
Mix to combine, then increase the speed and beat for 10 minutes. The mixture should become pale primrose in color, thicken so that lines of the beater remain in it, and triple or quadruple in bulk.
Meanwhile, melt the chocolate and butter in a small pan. Let cool to room temperature but don’t let it resolidify.
When the eggs and sugar are pale and very foamy, as described above, remove the bowl from the mixer stand.
Sift in half the flour and fold it in with a spatula. Repeat this step with the remaining flour. Finally fold in the butter and chocolate mixture.
When it is completely mixed in, pour it gently into the prepared springform pan. Put it into the preheated oven, and place a sheet of heavy-duty aluminum foil lightly over the top to prevent the surface from getting crusty. Bake for 18-20 minutes or until it feels tender but firm and springs back when gently pressed.
Remove and let cool on a wire rack for 20 minutes before releasing the clasp on the pan and cooling the cake completely.
To make the ChocolateCloud
, Boil 1 cup of the heavy cream. Stir in the sugar and then the cocoa powder to make a smooth thick paste
. Remove from the heat, and fold in the butter, adding about a tablespoon or so at a time. Stir until the paste is shiny. Let it cool down to blood heat.
While the chocolate mixture is cooling, whip the remaining 2 cups of cream. With a spatula, fold about a third of the whipped cream into the chocolate mixture. When it has blended in, thoroughly fold in another third, and then finally the remainder.
To finish, soak the cake with the Grand Marnier then gently pour the chocolate cloud mixture on top. Cool in the fridge overnight or for at least 8 hours.
This is easy and fresh-tasting. Exact amounts of each ingredient depend mostly on the size and shape of the glasses you use for preparing and serving. Unlike the Chocolate Cloud Cake above, which cuts into several servings, this dessert is designed to serve two. For more people — and it’s fun for kids so you might want to make it for a family Valentine’s Day treat — simply multiply the ingredients as needed.
About 1 cup yellow sponge or pound cake, broken into biggish pieces
About ½ cup sparkling wine or cider
1 pint strawberries, washed
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1 cup whipped cream
Divide the cake between two wine glasses or sherbet glass. Pour on the sparkling wine or cider.
Set aside the two most beautiful strawberries. Slice the others, discarding the leafy tops as you go.
Put half the sliced strawberries in a saucepan with 2 tablespoons of water and the sugar. Heat over low heat, stirring as the slices soften. When they are soft and the sugar has entirely dissolved, mix the cornstarch with a tablespoon of cold water. When you have a smooth paste, stir in a couple of tablespoons of the liquid from the cooked strawberries. Return this mixture to the pan and cook over low heat, stirring, until it has thickened.
Stir in the rest of the sliced strawberries and cook for another minute. Divide this mixture between the two glasses, spooning it on top of the cake.
Let cool. Top with whipped cream and the reserved berries.