Surprise your Valentine with Sexy Seafood Pasta and a Love Potion from the Neelys
This Valentine’s Day, why not forgo material gifts and share the gift of a home-cooked meal? Pat and Gina Neely offer up the perfect menu—easy, but light and delicious—for a very special evening.
Your humble Borzoi Cook and an expert from Books for Better Living, a wellness blog, came together to prepare two dishes from the Neelys’ menu: love potions and sexy seafood pasta.
After peeling and deveining the shrimp and scrubbing clean the mussels for the pasta dish, we decided to take a quick love potion break.
Drinking vodka cocktails before dinner has been assembled seemed like a decadent—if not slightly dangerous—proposition, but Katie from Books for Better Living assured me that pomegranates are rich in antioxidants. Well, in that case:
The red sauce for the pasta couldn’t be easier to prepare, nor more tasty. Take one can of crushed tomatoes, a couple cloves of minced garlic, some red-pepper flakes, and white wine. Stir over heat, and voila!
Next, add the seafood.
Once the mussels have opened, and the shrimps have taken on a pinkish hue, add a pound of cooked linguine and toss to combine.
Tada! Now you have an alluring Valentine’s Day dinner. For a wine pairing, I recommend a nice dry rosé.
To view the full recipes for the love potion and sexy seafood pasta, check out the Neelys’ full menu on Scribd. I guarantee you’ll want to pick up Pat and Gina’s The Neelys’ Celebration Cookbook, so you can try their belly-filling, heart-warming menus for all the joyous occasions 2012 will bring. Hint: if you’re still casting about for a perfect Super Bowl Sunday dish, you’ll want to see the Neelys’ menu, which includes jalapeño poppers, wings, potato skins, chili mac, brownies, and beer cocktails. Yowza.
Yours in cooking,
Pam Cortland
P.S. For more free recipes from Knopf’s cookbooks, subscribe to the Borzoi Cooks newsletter, written by yours truly!