Food is Love!

Valentine's Day is upon us again and you know our favorite way to show love is through food! We celebrated love a bit early this year, by joining together with friends to celebrate the Valentine's birthday of our very close friend Consuelo Alejandra. She requested an all chocolate dinner, a la Chocolat, so we had no choice but to deliver a savory chocolate main dish!

Using chocolate in a savory way can seem daunting or odd, but chocolate is actually a great ingredient to do this with because in its pure form it is not sweet at all. We searched and searched for an appropriate recipe. Now was not the time to experiment too much because this would be our first time explorin chocolate's savory side. We found an elegant and tasty recipe for a Roasted Beef Tenderloin with a Rosemary, Chocolate, Wine Sauce; it was definitely worth the effort, but it was an effort!


The end product of this recipe was unbelievable! The sauce was so fragrant and unique and dressed the pink, juicy beef tenderloin perfectly; however, it took much longer than the recipe suggested to reduce and thicken. I expected this to occur based on the comments I read about the recipe, so I began the sauce long before we began to roast the tenderloin. I found that for our use to double the amount of cocoa in the recipe (what's a chocolate dinner without extra chocolate) but I always recommend tasting your sauce as you are making flavor adjustments, because you could end up throwing the balance off entirely.

Our dish looked as beautiful as the recipe photo. I cut down the tenderloin myself from a big fatty piece of beef, which was beautifully done, I must say! It was cheaper than purchasing already prepared beef tenderloin from a gourmet grocery store, but that is always an option too! Diane seared the meat in a pan with some olive oil and then finished it off in the oven, roasting the beef to perfection and let it rest for about 15-20 minutes. Always let your meat rest, during that time the meat retains all its juices and reaches desired done-ness.

We had so much fun at dinner, dousing our plates in chocolate but since chocolate is not everyone's favorite, here are some suggestions from Food Network that will make your Valentine's Day dinner or any other special dinner filled with love!