Date Night #1

Last night we had an official cook-through-a-vegetarian-cookbook date night (see previous post for more on that).

We started with two recipes from Plenty: Caramelized Fennel with Goat Cheese and a Caramelized Garlic Tart. I thought the recipes would pair well. It turned out so incredible, I don't have superlatives to fully capture the deliciousness that occurred...other than to say it was far better than restaurant food (because as we discussed over candlelight last night, the restaurant would probably only give us one slice of the magnificent tart instead of the 2-3 that we indulged in at home).

And no, the tart is definitely not healthy (other than all that garlic...good for keeping the vampires away)...it's loaded with two types of goat cheese (a softer variety-we went with chevre-and a harder gouda) and a crème fraiche custard. But if I'm going to eat something high in fat, I'd rather have it be something this flavorful and truly satisfying, made to celebrate a special night. When was the last time you said that about McDonald's?

Browning the fennel pieces in butter and olive oil before caramelizing.

Cooking in my favorite apron.

I'm no food photographer, but that's the fennel before the goat cheese
and garnishes.

Waiting for the tart to come out of the oven, I snapped a few photos of us.
You can tell I'm shorter than John because I always miss the top of his
head in photos.

The timer went off! Hooray for garlic tart!

Excitement abounds!

The finished dish, topped with dill and lemon zest.

The gorgeous tart by candlelight.

Improvised dessert: we had leftover pie crust from the tart so we decided
to make mini peach pies in a muffin pan with peach preserves, topped
with a little egg wash and vanilla sugar to facilitate golden-browning.
We served them a la mode with vanilla bean ice cream.

Delicious!

We ended the night as awesomely as we started it: watching Back to the Future III together, content and full of good food.

Such a good movie decision.