A romantic new year's eve dinner for two

My boyfriend and I decided to stay in on new year's eve and I wanted to cook us a romantic dinner. The menu I chose was: herbed bacon and egg souffle; steak in a stilton sauce with boulangere potato stack; tiramisu. I thought I'd combine all the recipes into one blog post: enjoy!

Herbed cheese and bacon souffles

This recipe is adapted from the Slimming World recipe book Extra Easy Entertaining

Serves 2

You need:
Fry Light spray oil or similar
two rashers lean bacon, chopped
1 spring onion, chopped
pinch of chilli flakes
2 eggs, separated
chopped fresh parsley
dried dill
40g grated parmesan
pinch of mustard powder
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 180C or 160 C fan. Place a roasting pan one third full of hot water in the oven.

Fry the bacon and spring onion and add a pinch of dried chilli flakes.

Whisk the egg whites until stiff

In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks with the bacon and spring onion mixture and the herbs, along with three quarters of the parmesan. Add the mustard powder and season.

Fold the mixture into the egg whites, using a metal spoon.

Spray the insides of two ramekin dishes with oil and spoon the mixture into the ramekins. Sprinkle the remaining cheese over the top.

Bake for around 20 minutes until risen. These can be made the day before and heated up on the day.

We had these as a starter on new year's eve; I think they would work really well for breakfast or brunch as well.

I am sending these to Herbs on Saturday, hosted by Bangers and Mash and started by Karen of Lavender and Lovage.

I am also sending this to Jen at Blue Kitchen Bakes for her Classic French cooking challenge, as the recipe she has chosen this month is the souffle.

Steak in Stilton Sauce

This was our main course on new year's eve. I didn't follow a recipe, and just fried some rump steak; helpfully, when I went to buy some that day they were reduced from £4 each to £1.79 in Tesco. I added some double cream to the meat juices in the pan (also in the reduced price section - I love going shopping after Christmas!) and then added some Stilton - left over from Christmas. The stilton melted and made a lovely creamy sauce.

As this meal used reduced-price steak and cream, and leftover cheese, I am sending it to Frugal Food Fridays, hosted by Helen at Fuss Free Flavours.

Boulangere potato stacks

We had this as a side dish to accompany the steak (I also cooked some broccoli); I took the recipe from my new book Slimming World Extra Easy Entertaining. It was absolutely delicious and I will definitely make this again!

Serves 2
You need:
500g potatoes
1 litre vegetable stock
Fry Light or similar spray oil
tbsp chopped fresh parsley
4 tbsp Quark
2 garlic cloves, crushed or half a tablespoon garlic puree
salt and pepper
25g reduced fat grated cheddar

Peel the potatoes and slice with a mandolin or the wide edge on a grater

Bring the stock to the boil in a saucepan, add the potatoes and bring back to the boil

Drain the potatoes and reserve the stock. Put the potatoes into a bowl.

Mix in the quark, herbs and garlic with 6 tbsp of the reserved stock and season. Toss gently with the potatoes.

Spray a muffin tin with oil and press spoonfulls of the potato mixture down into each muffin cup.

Sprinkle the grated cheese over the top- I used more than the recipe suggested but my boyfriend definitely wasn't complaining! Bake for 25-30 mins. I didn't take a picture of these on the plate but if you remove them carefully you have neat little stacks of potato slices. And they taste fantastic!

Tiramisu

I got Nigella's new book Nigellissima for Christmas and adapted this recipe from the book as our new year's eve dessert.

Serves 2
You need:
50ml coffee (eg made up from instant)
1 tbsp coffee or chocolate liqueur
2 sponge fingers
1 egg white
200g mascarpone cheese
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp marsala
1 tsp cocoa powder

Make up the coffee, add the liqueur - I used a chocolate liqueur I bought in Italy last year -  and leave to cool.

Break each sponge finger into four pieces and place in a martini glass.

Pour the coffee mixture over the sponge fingers.

Beat the egg white with an electric whisk. In a separate bowl, beat the mascarpone and honey, then add the marsala if using and beat again.

Fold in the egg whites then spoon into the martini glasses.

Sprinkle with cocoa powder or grated chocolate

And serve!

I am sending this to the blog challenge Forever Nigella, hosted this month by Recipe Junkie. Forever Nigella is organised by Sarah at Maison Cupcake. The theme in January is "food to cherish your loved ones", and what better way to spoil my boyfriend than to make him this lovely dessert for our romantic dinner together? (Incidentally, we followed our romantic dinner by spending a romantic evening... playing Xbox. It was actually a lot of fun!)