An OS Valentine's meal?

frugallass

big mushrooms with brie and bacon for starters and a nice Marks and Spencers pud for dessert !

Bongedone

You could do chocolate souffle for dessert. They are really quite easy and look impressive. No good if you want to do everything in advance though as they need served instantly.

Boodle

Last valentines, our menu was this:

Goats cheese and beetroot salad (basically salad leaves topped with crumbled goats cheese and cubed vac-packed beetroot.)

Honey-roasted duck legs with peas and lettuce and parsnip/pot mash

Passionfruit fool (I just whipped some cream with a drop of vanilla and sugar to taste. I spooned half of this across 2 dishes, topped with passionfruit, then did another layer.)

It was very successful

EC12345

Ok, so this is what I am doing this year. I have a budget of £10 to buy starter, main and pudding for me and husband (not including wine as have lots already :beer: ).

Am going to cook mussels and pasta for main (Tesco doing two lots of mussels in garlic for £4 and pasta will be about £1) and fruit salad for pudding - so far have calculated this is going to be about £7.

Any ideas for a cheap starter for about £3. I thought about dips and raw veg but you guys probably have loads better ideas.

Post your cheap valentine meals as well.

Thanks.
:j

floss2

What weight are the packs of mussels? Fresh mussels are fairly cheap - I paid £3.65 for 900g on Friday and that was in Tesco - a fishmonger may be even cheaper.....then all you need is a small onion some parsley, some oil or butter, garlic, a glass of white wine & about 3 tbsp of creme fraiche....soften the onion & garlic, add the wine & steam the mussels for 4-5 mins max. Reduce the liquor to make a sauce for the pasta & whisk in the creme fraiche. Remove mussels from the shells & add to sauce, then add your pasta. Serve sprinkled with chopped parsley.

Or have mussels (w/o pasta) for starters with some crusty bread to soak up the juice, then do pasta with pesto, pancetta & pine nuts for mains, with fruit & choccy dip for pud

floss2

We're having h/m (Gary Rhodes) chicken liver parfait in heart pots with heart-shaped toast (like pate but lighter in texture & very cheap to make), slow roasted lamb shanks (again, lovely AND cheap) & h/m (Jamie Oliver) heart-shaped meringues with pears & hazelnuts (to use some of the millions of egg whites in the freezer!)

angelavdavis

EC12345 wrote: »

Any ideas for a cheap starter for about £3. I thought about dips and raw veg but you guys probably have loads better ideas.
:j

What about individual cheese souffles served with a green salad? Bit different and my OH wasn't sure he would like it when I cooked it - but the souffles were lovely and not difficult to cook.

Another cook ahead idea is soup.

Leopardlady

On the mussels theme, they have them in sainsburys for £1.99 a bag and they have 25% extra free, so that would be even cheaper, as a bag would be a very generous starter for two. I would also prepare them with onion, garlic and white wine, ooh you have made me really hungry!

Enjoy, OH is playing a gig on valentines so we will have to chose a different day to celebrate

Miss_Liquorice

The starter I'm cooking for Valentine's is getting a sheet of puff pastry, and covering the first and last 3rd of it with pesto, and rolling it up (like two swiss rolls?) and cutting it into 'bites', and having it with a garlic dip.

I always have pesto in, so it's only going to cost a couple of quid at most.

Penelope_Penguin

Enjoy your meals I'll add this to the existing thread so that you can have lots more ideas

Penny. x