Who said that a middle-of-the-week dinner cannot make you feel as if you were in a chic Mediterranean-style restaurant? I decided to go for what I guess you can describe as a cross between French cheese plate and Spanish tapas selection.
I bought several kinds of cheese which we usually do not buy and which looked exotic enough, cut them into cubes, labeled and arranged nicely on a cheese board. Added some sliced ciabatta, smoked salmon, cherry tomatoes, olives and grapes. Two kinds of tapenade, a bowl with virgin olive oil with a dash of balsamic vinegar in it (might sound a bit weird, but it’s really great for dipping ciabatta into it) and a beef carpaccio complemented the picture, same as the glasses with white wine.
Well, it certainly did break the routine for us, and the nice presentation on the square, white china definitely helped. It didn’t take long to prepare, and it was actually fun to do it. Another plus - no standing in the kitchen with boiling pans or heat-blowing oven is involved in the preparation, which might make it a good idea for a St Valentine’s “home-made” meal. After all, as the old fridge-magnet saying goes: “it’s either me or the house; both of us cannot look good.” But with this idea, both are possible ;-)
And for those of us who are slightly challenged when it comes to cooking, be assured that this meal is practically impossible to spoil – not many things can go wrong with cutting cubes of cheese (if you have the basics of knife-cutting, that is).