Sappy Valentines Day!

I know that I am a day early- but we celebrated our Valentines day yesterday, so take that convention.
Van and I started making our Valentines dinner a few years ago, instead of going out.  We choose to go this route because we believe that for the most part Valentines menus are:

1. Extremely overpriced and not necessarily that tasty
2. Everyone and their mother goes out to eat on Valentines Day
3. Because everyone is out, oftentimes the service is lacking

Therefore, Van proposed to make me a dinner of my choice, and since Valentines is on a Monday this year- we celebrated last night.  I predictably chose one of my favorites: Shrimp Romesco.  Although it is a fairly long and intensive process, it is so, absolutely worth it.
Van uses the Suzanne Goin recipe, from Sunday Supper at Lucques.  She is a truly incredible chef, and has 4 restaurants in Los Angeles: A.O.C., Lucques (I have been to these two), Tavern and The Hungry Cat.  She also has a few cookbooks, you know how I love wikipedia, so find her profile here.
Anyways, shrimp romesco is a Spanish dish that is basically shrimp (duh) with a romesco sauce, which is: fried bread, canned tomatoes, hazelnuts, almonds, chile arbol, garlic, lemon juice, red vinegar and LOTS and LOTS of olive oil, (almost an entire bottle!) 

Here's a photo of Van pulverizing:

Once pulverized, (how many times can I use that word?!) the ingredients resemble a reddish pesto-like sauce.

Then the uncooked shrimp are added:

And, a short time later..the finished product looks like this...TaDa!

Yumm yummm! One of my favorite meals of all time: Shrimp Romesco with collared greens and french country bread with a Riesling of course.
Happy Valentines or Anti-Valentines, depending on what you're celebrating this year.
xx MK

And chocolates and pineapple for dessert of course. :)