February 16

The Most Romantic Meal Ever

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• Homemade Fettuccine [View Recipe]

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  Ingredients

  • 2 large eggs
  • 1.5 cups flour
  • 2 teaspoons water (divided)
  • .25 teaspoon oil

  Instructions

  We start by making the dough. We break each egg into a small bowl and then pour into the bowl of our 6-quart KitchenAid <a href="/tools/appliances/kitchenaid/">stand-up mixer</a>. With the flat beater, we turn the machine to stir speed and beat to mix up the eggs.

  Next we add the flour with the machine off, trying to keep the beaten eggs in the middle and have a wall of flour all around them. We turn our mixer to speed 2 and mix for 20 seconds. We scrape the dough off the beater and switch to the dough hook. We knead on speed 2 for about a minute and a half, but the dough seems too dry. We add half a teaspoon of water and knead again for another minute. The dough is still not coming together, we should have either used fresher eggs or added a little water before switching to the dough hook. We add a teaspoon of water and the olive oil at this point - we really didn't want to add much liquid but the olive oil is sometimes used for flavor. We knead again on speed 2 for a minute. We add the remaining 1/2 teaspoon of water and knead for another minute and a half.

  At this point the dough looks a little sticky and feels elastic. We remove the dough from the mixer and hand knead it for a minute on our cutting board. We wrap it in plastic wrap and set it aside for 30 minutes to rest.

  After about 15 minutes of the dough resting, we put a large pot of water on the stove to cook the pasta. We turn it on medium-high heat.

  When the dough is ready, we cut it into four pieces and flatten each piece by hand. Once we have flattened the pasta to about ½ inch thick, we prepare to feed it into the pasta <a href="/tools/appliances/kitchenaid/pasta_roller.html">roller attachment</a> of our KitchenAid <a href="/tools/appliances/kitchenaid/">mixer</a>.

  We start with the pasta roller on its widest setting - 1. We feed the dough into the roller, being careful not to push the dough into the roller, nor pull it as it emerges from the opposite side. Having the attachment for the KitchenAid is wonderful as we do not have to exert any effort. The roller does all of the work and does it well.

  After feeding the dough into the roller, we fold the dough and feed it back into the roller. We do this five or so times to work out all of the air bubbles. It is not necessary to add additional flour - the dough is smooth and easy to work with.

  We then decrease the roller width to two and feed the dough into it. We decrease the width to three and repeat the process. Finally, we repeat the process at settings of four and then five.

  As we make our 4 long sheets of pasta, we place them, sprinkled with a little flour and folded halfway, on our cutting board. We remove the pasta roller and attach the cutter. We feed each piece of dough into the fettuccine cutter. Our daughter helps by "catching" the fettuccine as they are cut, as we watch her very closely around the working machine! We place a "nest" of noodles back on the cutting board when they are cut, and repeat until all the fettuccine are ready to be cooked.

  We add the fresh pasta and a pinch of salt to the boiling water and stir. We cook for about 2-3 minutes until the pasta is just tender. When the pasta is cooked, we drain it in a colander and pour the fettuccine into the sauce. We toss and serve!

• Sausage Cream Sauce [View Recipe]

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  Ingredients

  • .33 pound pasta
  • 10 ounces sausage
  • .5 tablespoon oil
  • 1 cup sauce
  • .25 cup wine
  • salt
  • 1 tablespoon cream
  • 1 tablespoon parsley (chopped)
  • hot pepper flakes
  • cheese

  Instructions

  We start tonight's meal by filling our large pasta pot with water, covering, and heating it over medium heat. We defrost our frozen sausage links in the microwave by putting them in a bowl, covered with wax paper, on auto timed defrost for 5 minutes. We place our saute pan on the stove and begin heating this over medium heat. When the sausage is defrosted, we use scissors to slip the casings of the sausage off so we can break up the meat easily into chunks in the pan. When the pan is hot, we add the olive oil and the sausage to the pan, breaking up the sausage with a wooden spoon. We brown the sausage, turning occasionally, for a few minutes until the pieces are nicely browned. Meanwhile, we place the frozen sauce that is in a microwaveable container in the microwave and defrost it for a few minutes.

  When the sausage chunks are browned, we remove them to a paper-towel lined plate. Next, we use paper towels and our tongs, to wipe out some excess oil from the pan. We deglaze the pan with the red wine, scraping up the drippings with our wooden spoon. We stir in the sauce and bring it to a boil. We lower the heat and add the browned sausage pieces back to the pan. We cook, partially covered, stirring occasionally, and checking that they are just simmering, for about 5 minutes. We want the sausages to be cooked through.

  Meanwhile, the water has come to a boil. We lower it and wait for the sausage sauce to be ready. When the sausages are cooked, we stir in the heavy cream and the parsley. We keep the pan on low heat while we return the pasta water to a boil.

  We add the fresh pasta and a pinch of salt to the boiling water and stir. We cook for about 2-3 minutes until the pasta is just tender. When the pasta is cooked, we drain it in a colander and pour the fettuccine into the sauce. We stir with tongs and serve with hot pepper flakes and freshly grated Locatelli.

• Roasted Asparagus
• Italian Bread
• Chocolate Soufflés [View Recipe]

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  Ingredients

  • .5 tablespoon butter
  • 3 tablespoons sugar (divided)
  • 3.5 ounces chocolate
  • 2 tablespoons powdered egg whites
  • 2 teaspoons powdered egg whites
  • .5 cup water
  • 1 teaspoon lemon juice
  • .5 cup cream
  • 2 large strawberries (rinsed and patted dry)
  • .25 cup strawberry sauce
  • sprinkle sugar

  Instructions

  We start by preheating the oven to 400 degrees. We make sure the rack is in the center of the oven and that the rack on top is far from the center rack. The souffles will rise after all! Next we get our ramekins ready. We will use two 8-ounce ramekins for this dessert. We place our butter in a piece of paper towel and rub the butter on the bottom and all the way up the insides of the two ramekins. Next we place half a tablespoon of sugar in each ramekin, reserving the remaining two tablespoons for the egg whites, and tilt each ramekin around to coat the butter completely with sugar. We dump out the extra sugar into the sink.

  Next we open the package of Lindt chocolate. We want about 2.25 ounces of chocolate for the recipe (the rest we reserve for eating!), so we break off a 20-square piece and chop it on a piece of parchment over our cutting board with a serrated knife. We put the chopped chocolate into a medium sized heat-safe bowl that we will put over simmering water to make a "double boiler". We place some water into a medium pot and check with the bowl of chocolate - we do not want the water to touch the bottom of the bowl. We adjust and then place the pot on the stove. We bring it to a boil and then take the pot off the heat and place the chopped chocolate bowl on top. We stir occasionally with a rubber spatula until the chocolate is melted.

  Meanwhile, we place all the powdered egg whites into a bowl. We place the water in a measuring cup and microwave for 40 seconds to warm. We pour the warm water over the egg whites and stir with a fork. We want the powder to be completely dissolved and this takes a few minutes.

  When the egg whites are ready, we pour them into the bowl of our KitchenAid stand-up mixer. We turn to speed 8 and begin beating them with the wire whip. We add the lemon juice with the machine on and when the egg whites start to get frothy, after about 5 minutes, we add the reserved sugar in a stream while still beating the egg whites. We turn the machine to speed 10 and whip to just before stiff peaks - we do not want dry egg whites but we want them to be more than soft peaks. This takes about 10 more minutes.

  Meanwhile, we place the melted chocolate back on medium-low heat in our "double boiler" and check every couple of minutes by stirring and touching. We want the melted chocolate to get hot.

  When the egg whites are ready, we stop the mixer and remove the bowl. We fold in the hot chocolate with our rubber spatula. When it is pretty well combined, we pour the mixture into a large measuring cup.

  We divide the mixture between the two prepared ramekins. The ramekins are filled all the way to the top. We carefully place them into the preheated oven and bake them for about 10 minutes. We want the souffles to rise over an inch above the rim and the top to start to brown.

  While the souffles are baking, we quickly clean up and then whip the chilled cream to stiff peaks for some whipped cream. We do this with our cleaned KitchenAid bowl and wire whip, but it is a little slow since we are just whipping a small amount of cream. We probably should have done it by hand! Next we cut off the top of each strawberry with a small paring knife and then make slits from just under the top to the bottom of each strawberry so we can fan them out decoratively. We also remove the strawberry sauce from the fridge and microwave it for 30 seconds to warm.

  As soon as the souffles are done, we remove them carefully from the oven and serve topped with the whipped cream, strawberry sauce, strawberries, and a sprinkling of confectioner's sugar.