Tag Archives: Pasta

Mar5

A Valentine’s Day dinner on the town

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Tuesday, 14-Feb-2023


I’m in a bit of a non-standard relationship situation right now.


Yeah, yeah, shut up I know that’s normal for me. Okay, I get it.

I’m trying, and this is actually working fairly well for both myself, and my partners. That’s right – partners. I don’t often talk about my detailed personal life here, as strange as that is to say about a blog, but… it can’t be avoided when I’m posting two different Valentine’s Day events with two different people.


I’m dating two people non-exclusively – we’ve discussed it in-depth, and this is where everyone’s comfort level is right now. Their lives are a bit crazy and chaotic, and mine isn’t any more normal. You’ll see in mid-March, dear reader, when I post about my upcoming trip to Dublin and the reasoning behind it.


I love holidays, and Valentine’s day is no exception. How to juggle this with two partners, you may ask? Well… it’s easy, when the Universe helps you out. See, my partner Jessie works at a school, and gets out quite a bit earlier than I do. It can be challenging sometimes, since it means she has to go to bed much earlier than I do, but in this case it meant we could do dinner quite a bit earlier on Valentine’s Day itself than I normally would.

I like celebrating, and I love getting to dress up for a fancy event on the town. I don’t do this too often, though, since I don’t have a real occasion to get nice reservations to a fancy uptown dive. Well… if Valentine’s Day doesn’t count, I don’t know what does.



Jessie and I met up early, for a planned reservation at 4:45. Early, like I mentioned, but that meant we had a much broader choice on where to go!

We’d decided on Italian – pasta, specifically. A small restaurant called Allora had caught my eye a week or so ahead of time, and they worked perfectly with the table-times that they had. We met up, posed for a few quick photos, and hopped in the lyft to make our way downtown.



Dinner was, unsurprisingly, absolutely amazing.

Small Italian meatballs as a starter

Nice glasses of a glorious house red wine

Rotini as a main – I got mine with Dungeness crab, and Jessie got hers with seared chicken in a white cheese sauce. We shared quite a bit, as you might expect.



It was glorious, and I absolutely adored having the chance to dress up outside the office, and swirl around on the town for an evening.

Dec28

A fancy dinner evening

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Wednesday, 08-Dec-2021

It’s been a while since I’ve had occasion to really throw down and make a big, multi-course, fancy and fun dinner. Daniel and Erin’s visit had given me some change, but for some reason those hadn’t quite scratched the itch that I was feeling…

My poor neighbors. Subjected to such cruelty. Having to come over and get fed.

I don’t think they minded, so much.




The plan for the evening was a four-course meal. I’d say “nothing fancy”, but that wouldn’t quite be true… I was taking this as a chance to practice, to experiment, and to try a few recipes that I’d been wanting to try out. For quite a while, in one case!

Adding to the challenge was a new dietary restriction – I’ve cooked for vegetarians and for vegans, but never for someone dairy-free… That gave me some interesting leeway, but still put a block on many of my standard cooking practices.

I was aiming to follow the framework of a fancy Italian meal – small courses, planned and timed to flow into each other as best as possible.

Without further Ado – The meal!


Course 1 – A pasta course.

This one was a light starter, but with enough heft that we wouldn’t be distracted by hunger for the rest of the meal. Simple, clean, and pleasant:

Bucatini, tossed in a non-dairy butter sauce mixed with a tiny bit of truffle oil, with soppressata sausage, salt, and pepper added. Garnished with parsley, of course, since I’m not a savage.




Course 2 – A veggie course.

I’ve been wanting to cook this for years, even since trying it while visiting Rome back in 2018. Judaean Artichokes! Trimmed, spread out, and oiled with truffle oil, olive oil, salt, and pepper.

My neighbors were kind enough to bring over an air fryer, so I didn’t have to deep-fry them like the recipe calls for – and I’ll say, they turned out beautiful! There’s far less meat on an artichoke than I remembered, so this one was a good “rest” course, where peeling the artichoke was as much an event as eating it was. It gave us a good chance to chat and relax before the main course.




Course 3 – The main event

This was going to be a challenge.

See, I love cooking steak, and I love making fancy steak. One of my favorite “show off” dishes is a variant of Steak Au Poivre, where I flambe fillet mignon in a brandy sauce. But you see… that works because the brandy flames work with the butter and steak juice, making a glorious base for the heavy cream.

None of which are dairy-free. As a variant, I grabbed non-dairy butter along with oat heavy cream, but this was definitely going to be a challenge.

In the end… the steaks came out well, but the sauce was a bust. I tried my best, I really did, but the non-dairy butter that I got just… didn’t quite work. Somehow it opened the grains in my skillet and caused the brandy to… seep through? Or something? Which meant that, when I lit it up, it didn’t really mix or caramelize at all, and instead just set the whole pan on fire. Literally the whole pan. All sides.

I was able to get the sauce together by using a ton of fake-butter and oil, but when it did come out… It was somehow a chocolate sauce? I don’t know what I did, but I think the sweetness and nuttyness of the oat milk combined in some arcane dark ritual.

End the end, the steak was excellent on its own – especially when paired with the solid full-bodied red wine that I’d picked out.




Course 4 – Dessert

For dessert, we had chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream!

“But Ben, those aren’t dairy-free!”

“You’re right, other Ben! But I MADE THEM DAIRY-FREE!”

The ice cream was easy. I bought non-dairy ice cream. Boom, done.

The cake? Vegan chocolate cake, one-mug, in the microwave. Boom, done and delicious.


The wine pairing? Loganberry aperitif – sweet, sparkling, and a glorious pairing… especially with the tiny bit of cherry juice that I added to the cake batter 😀




I’m quite proud with how everything came out. Definitely a fun evening!





Bibliography: Recipes!

– Bucatini = Don’t need a recipe, just… cook it up?
– Judaean Artichokes = https://www.thespruceeats.com/carciofi-alla-giudia-roman-jewish-artichoke-recipe-2017775
– Steak Au Poivre (WARNING: Graphic language. Sorry. It is what it is.) = https://imgur.com/gallery/rrqSi
– Single-Mug vegan chocolate cake = https://www.noracooks.com/vegan-mug-cake/