Pancetta Green Beans and Valentine's Day

For Valentine's Day, Andrew and I decided to make dinner together, in part to save some money, in part so I could make the French Fridays with Dorie recipe, and in part so I would could watch the first episode of Watson playing on Jeopardy (which was pretty hilarious). We did, though, decide to splurge a little bit and got some huge and subsequently delicious porterhouse steaks.

The pancetta green beans were really quite delicious. I must admit that I was a little lazy with this recipe and didn't bother to blanch the beans and probably overcooked them a little bit. What can I say? I was already a few glasses of champagne in! The pancetta was also surprisingly salty. I've used it several times before, although I usually used Volpi instead of Boar's Head, and I'm not sure if that made a difference. It wasn't terrible at all, but I am glad I didn't add any more salt to the dish. The flavor was complex and a little smoky. While I love green beans plain or sometimes with almonds, this added a welcome punch up of flavor.

For dessert I'd made a red velvet cake using this recipe from Smitten Kitchen. Despite lots of red gel food coloring, the color was not quite there, but rich and moist nonetheless. I also used the Southern Comfort Buttercream recipe from The Boozy Baker, except I used Jack Daniels instead. It was a lot of flavor and I probably should've used a little less frosting, but it was really easy to work with, so I just kept working with it. We finally finished off the last piece yesterday.

It was probably one of the very best Valentine's Days ever.