Our Valentines Day candle light dinner....

I know Valentines day is long gone , but since both of us were working that day, I decided to postpone the celebration so that it would be just perfect.
Of course I received Roses , a card and a gift from my Hubby on the actual V day and I gave him a card with an invitation for a Romantic candle light dinner for Saturday  to spend some time by ourselves, enjoy good food and be lazy, which is a very rare thing considering the fact that we have a 7month old at home. :-)
So yesterday was Our Valentines Day!!

Well I had the menu all planned out and I had some ideas on how I wanted our dinner table to be set and arranged. We had our romantic songs all sorted out in my laptop . I even bought  a decorative wall hanging , but I forgot about that ! :-)
Hubby did the honours of bringing in the centerpiece and the candles.

Even though my hubby was my Guest I wanted it to be perfect and him to feel like he had a great time . There were some delays here and there, running behind the baby and getting the food warmed up after each course  and all that, but must say that I was totally satisfied by how it turned up and so was Manish!

Another funny thing was we forgot to turn out the lights for our romantic candle light dinner until dinner was over :-) , coz of all the above said distractions , but later (once the baby was tucked in) we did turn out the lights and just sat and relaxed and listened to sweet and light hearted romantic songs . Anyway I thought I should share our beautiful evening with you all.
This is how our final dinner table setting looked like. I checked some sites online to decide on the cutlery arrangement, though dessert spoon and fork should be kept above the plate, I din't have place there so just kept it next to the main course spoon and fork respectively.

Manish and Manav took their seats, the music was on :-) and I know Manish was all excited, hopefully the baby too...Well he was already fed , so he just had to sit and enjoy though he did get bored at times and we had to keep entertaining him, but he was a sweety throughout!

Now for the menu, I wanted something different from our daily routine food and I wanted something classy. I planned on a 4 course meal.  I din't stick to any particular cuisine and instead ended up offering Indian for 1st course, Thai for 2nd course, combination of Jamaican + Mexican for the main course and Italian for dessert! :-) Any guesses??

I wanted soup for my 1st course and recently on several blogs I had seen this really simple and easy Creamy Cauliflower soup. I took the recipe from Kankana's blog which I love! I added extra crushed pepper though, so Creamy n Peppery Cauliflower soup!
(Click here for Recipe)

My next course was meant to be like a second appertizer course. I came upon this really good Thai Fish Cake recipe online (Delia Online). I had all the ingredients and it was really simple.
I prepared them into small balls and made a tangy Lime and Cilantro Mayo dip (which was my own recipe). They were perfect and Manish , a fish lover, simply loved the flavor combinations!
(Click here for Recipe)

For the main course, I have heard about how good Jerk chicken is from few friends and I knew I wanted to try that. I also prepared some Coconut Rice, a mild coconutty flavored rice to go with the spicy chicken. Both recipes are from here (Food Network by Nigella Lawson) - my Jamaican/Carribean side of the main course.
I noticed Jerk chicken being paired with mango or peach salsa on several websites, so I though why not add that too, so that's my Mexican dish :-)
(Click here for Jerk Chicken Recipe)

Now I wanted a knockout dessert and I have been craving to try out Panacotta for some time now.
I saw a beautiful and really easy recipe for Yoghurt Panacotta with Strawberry Jam from here (blog named Closet Cooking). I followed the recipe exactly and a knockout dessert it was! Manish loved it and it tasted  and looked awesome.
(Click here for Recipe)

The dinner was an absolute success and Manish said he will forever remember this night. I'm so happy :-)
 I may do similar dinners again but this one will forever be my favorite!

I will post the recipe of all the above mentioned dishes soon and let me tell you, they were really good , really easy and you must try them. I started cooking yesterday at 12:00pm and I was done before 5pm. I mean for a 4 course meal from scratch that's a really small time (I marinated for the Jerk chicken previous night though ).
Hope you all enjoyed reading and I do hope you'll be waiting for the recipes!!

Linking this post to:
1. Valentines Day event hosted by Anzz @ AnzzCafe

- Manju