Have you ever wished you could dine out at a fancy restaurant with your hubby or with one of your children, but you can’t leave home, maybe because it’s just one of you at home, or you have a baby or kids that you can’t leave, and no babysitter? Today we’re going to talk about how to bring the fancy restaurant to you.
This works great for a date night with your hubby, or for if you want to have a date night with one of your kids. We’ve done this often where it’s mom and dad and one of the children. It’s a special night for them, and they get to choose the menu. Today I’m going to talk about some ideas of food you can make that’s fancy; how to bring the fancy restaurant to you when you can’t go to it, and a couple of other ideas to make the whole evening fancy.
Sometimes we just need a break, a refreshing time, a reprieve, and we just need some good food, and some relaxed conversation without having to jump up every five minutes, or make a complicated meal. A restaurant’s so great for this. It’s a change in atmosphere, a new place with delicious food that you don’t have to cook. So, how can we bring some of those elements home without it being a huge effort with a huge amount of cooking and preparation before? I’m going to talk about some ideas for how to do that easily and in a way so that you can also relax and enjoy the evening.
There are a couple of more obvious ways to do this, like to get take out. It’s harder to get fancy take out, though. You can certainly get a steak, but then it’s going to be very expensive. The ways I’m going to suggest are a little less pricey, although still probably more expensive than an ordinary meal.
The other thing you can do is to cook something in advance earlier in the week, and have that ready so that it doesn’t take a lot of effort at the time. But again, it’s harder to cook something fancy and store it in advance, so I’m going to give you a couple of ideas of things that you can do on the day, things that don’t take a lot of effort, but are still yummy. I’ll also mention some things that you can look for at the grocery store that you can make into a fancy meal pretty easily – things that are mostly pre-made.
So, let’s get started. One of our favorite things to have for a special date night is ravioli. We’ve also done this on a special evening event with all of our kids. Often you can find pre-made, frozen ravioli at the grocery store. We found four cheese ravioli, ravioli with shredded beef and mascarpone, and ravioli with butternut and feta or butternut and mascarpone. We also found some with spinach and some sort of cheese. Generally we like the meat ones best – we’ve even found ground beef filled ravioli. These all feel very elegant to me. You don’t need a lot of pieces. They’re very filling, and they’re a little different to ordinary pasta.
So, what we’ve done is bought some ravioli that’s ready to cook, and defrosted it. You need to be careful with it. It’s often better to separate it on a plate when it’s a little frozen, because then it doesn’t stick together as much. You need to separate the pieces carefully so they don’t pull out bits of pasta from each other, as then when you try to cook them all the filling will leak out. Carefully separate them when they’re still a little frozen, and then set up a pot of boiling water. When it’s boiling, you should add a little salt and a tiny bit of olive oil or coconut oil, and then you put your ravioli in the water. They need to cook in a similar way and with a similar time length to ordinary pasta. You can taste the corner of one when you think it might be ready, but it’ll take just a few minutes. You should gently stir them while they’re cooking so they don’t stick together. If they start going flat with the filling coming out, then you’ve already been cooking them too long. It also can happen if the water’s too hot, but they shouldn’t separate.
Don’t let it boil too ferociously – it must be a simmer. Once the ravioli is in, you can take the lid off so that it doesn’t get too hot, but keep an eye on it so that it’s still at a slow simmer, but not too hot. Now and then, give them a gentle stir just to make sure they don’t stick to each other. As soon as they’re ready you can start scooping them out with a slotted spoon and placing them on your plates.
Ravioli works nicely in an elegant slight bowl, like a curved plate – a big, open bowl. Put the pieces in the middle, say five to six, and then add a little sauce. Again, we like to use the grocery store for this, so we usually get sun dried tomato and pecorino sauce. I find a plain tomato or cream tomato sauce is not as good. The pecorino, which is a cheese, just gives it that edge. It’s really good! So, you heat up a little bit of sun dried tomato pecorino sauce. We’ve also done this with a cheesy sauce, but I definitely prefer the tomato. Then you scoop some over the ravioli, put a tiny bit of olive oil on, and then some parmesan cheese, and it looks very elegant in that bowl, right in the middle. You can enjoy those for a main course.
For an appetizer, we often do the one with cucumber, tomato, and cream cheese that I’ve spoken about before. It’s quick and easy – just cut some slices of cucumber and arrange them on a side plate, then add a little bit of cream cheese, one scoop on each piece of cucumber. Cut some tomatoes, or if you don’t like tomatoes, use a little bit of red pepper, and put a little piece on each. cucumber slice. Then top it with a little bit of basil pesto or grated carrot. That’s a fun appetizer.
Another one uses puff pastry. If you can get your hands on some puff pastry, simply cut it into squares and put them into a shallow cookie dish, a cookie tray that you would normally put silicone cups into. A shallow one works best in this case. You put the puff pastry onto the tray, and then you add a little bit of steamed veg: butternut, zucchini, or some tomato, and then you add feta or some other cheese, a bit of salt, and a bit of rosemary, and there you go. It’s really easy. You bake it for 10 minutes on a reasonably high temperature like 400 degrees fahrenheit, 200 Celsius.
They’ll get a little bit crispy, and they’ll taste delicious. It’s a great appetizer. Another option for an appetizer is halloumi, the cheese, with zucchini and red pepper. You can slice the zucchini into thin strips or diagonal pieces, just not too small, and then you steam those, either in a veg steamer if you have it, or in your instant pot, or even simply in a pan. Just put a little bit of water in and put a lid on until the zucchini is soft but not too soggy. Add a little bit of salt or basil pesto to that.
Then cook the halloumi – you fry halloumi cheese. Brown each side with a little bit of salt, and that’ll be delicious. Do the same with the red pepper as with the other vegetables – you steam it until it’s soft, and you add a little olive oil and salt.
Then you create an elegant pile in the middle of a plate. We have a few zucchini slices, a little bit of halloumi, and some red pepper piled on top. You don’t have to make a lot, and one of the things about making it easy for elegant dinners at home, is to just do a small amount of the thing, unlike when you’re cooking for your family. Just use a little bit of cheese, a little bit of zucchini, and a little bit of red pepper. This makes it elegant, and doesn’t take too much to cook. In my steamer, I can steam some zucchini on one side and some red pepper on the other side, and then it’s done.
Another great fancy-ish meal that’s very easy to do at home is ribs. You can have pork ribs or beef ribs, whatever you prefer. Have a look at your grocery store for marinated ribs. They’ll often be marinated in barbecue sauce, and they’re very easy to cook. All you do is throw them in your crock pot or in your slow cooker for a couple of hours on high, and then turn them down if you need to to keep warm for dinnertime and they’ll be delicious. You just need to check at some point with a knife if they feel tender, and then just keep them warm after that. Two to three hours is plenty. And then there you go! You just dish them up when you’re ready. Have a nice finger bowl full of boiling water with a tiny bit of soap in it. You put that at the table for fingers with some elegant napkins, and then put out steak knives and enjoy your ribs.
It’s not necessary to have a side with this, because for an elegant meal you can have a single item for each course. If you’d like to have some vegetables with the meal then do that as the appetizer. Steam some long stemmed broccoli, add a little olive oil and salt, and there’s your appetizer. Then the ribs on their own are the main course, and it’s delicious and fun to eat on a date night.
You could also do steak. This is a little harder to cook, but you could get a steak takeaway. If you want to make it a little cheaper, buy a good steak like a sirloin, or even a fillet, and there are ways to do it easily, depending on how you like your meat done. Often on the grill is good, or you can do it in a pan if it’s not too thick.
For your sirloin I find best if you leave it to come to room temperature, and then rub in lots of salt and pepper on both sides. I prefer not to add oil before cooking because I find it burns on the outside before it’s cooked on the inside. Then I’ll heat up my pan and add oil at the last minute just before the steak. Then I’ll cook it on both sides, and then leave it to rest for the same amount of time as I cooked it for. That’ll be about one to two minutes on each side if it’s a thin sirloin.
You can order a sauce. You can often buy cheese sauce at the grocery store, or you can fry some mushrooms with a lid on the pan, and add a little bit of cream, turn it off, and there’s a delicious sauce for your steak.
A cheese fondue is also an amazing way to have a date night or a meal with one of your kids, though it is a little harder to do. A lot of grocery stores do actually stock pre-made cheese fondue that’s often imported from Switzerland. It’ll be in a box with a foil packet inside containing the cheese, which has already been melted and mixed and everything added to it that’s necessary. In that case, all you need to do is to melt it. I have a cheese fondue pot, which is a ceramic pot, so that it doesn’t burn. It might burn in a stainless steel pot, but you can do it in those if you’re careful. Simply melt it slowly on the stovetop, and then dip your bread into the fondue and enjoy that.
If you want to make it at home, there are lots of videos on YouTube showing you how. In fact, I have a video that I’ll put on this blog post, which will be on familyfoodformoms.com on this particular episode, and then you can see how to make it. You basically have to heat up one cup of white wine with about a teaspoon of lemon juice in it until it’s come to a simmer, and then you add some Gruyere and some Emmentaler – basically Swiss cheeses, and a little cornstarch or potato starch sprinkled on the cheese. It’ll take about three cups of cheese, and you slowly mix that in with a figure eight stir until it’s melted. Then you add a tiny bit of nutmeg and some salt, and there’s your cheese fondue. It also works best in a ceramic fondue dish because that’ll keep it warm and soft.
Then pull your bread apart into chunks- slightly stale bread works great, and you use a fondue fork to eat your fondue.
These are just some ideas you can look around in your grocery store for. You can use anything that looks a little elegant to you, and that’s pre-cooked, so that you just have to warm it. Maybe have elegant quiches, or anything that you like, and you think would be fancy enough to have for your at home meal. That way, it’s cheaper than if you got it at a restaurant, but it’s much quicker and easier than cooking something from scratch at home, and you can choose a smaller amount than you would for your whole family. Then make it fancy. Put together a couple of things that look fancy to you, and there you go.
We like to set the table in a fancy way. I like to use all the things that I don’t often get to use, because I don’t have enough for the whole family. I like to use strings of lights, underplates, fancy glasses, and fancy silverware – all the things that look special. I have various paper napkins with hearts on them, or patterns, or roses, things like that help to look elegant. We have soft music playing in the background, and anything else that makes the dinner extra special.
I’ve mentioned this before, and this is great for Valentine’s Day – a chocolate fondue. Simply melt some good quality chocolate over a double boiler with a tiny bit of cream so that it doesn’t solidify while you’re eating it, and then you can dip pieces of strawberry, or if the strawberries are small, whole ones. You can use grapes and pieces of banana, pear, or apple. They’re all really delicious dipped in chocolate, and it’s a very romantic meal. Instead of putting the chocolate in the middle of the table, which can be messy, in this case, you would put some in a dish at each person’s place, and everybody has their own little bowl of chocolate to dip into. If there’s just two of you, you can put it between you, and then it doesn’t use quite as much chocolate.
Lastly, tell whoever’s coming to the meal to dress smartly and elegantly, and enjoy making a big thing of it. Have something that you can really enjoy together as a celebration. With Valentine’s Day coming up, try to think of some meals that have red in them, and things that are extra romantic, that you wouldn’t normally eat, but that are easy for you to make. I hope you enjoy having a special meal soon. The best way to find creative ideas is to spend some time alone. Go for a little walk and have a think. What do you think will work well for your date night or your family special event?