Happy Valentine's Day!

Today was a great day. Brian and I started the day with a traditional Filipino breakfast. With our bellies nice and full we hopped on the bus and headed to the downtown Seattle library. If you live in the Seattle area and haven't been, you must go. The architecture is beautiful with such bright and vibrant colors inside.

Outside the library

We grabbed some books on Thailand and settled in some chairs to read up on the country. It was a little hard to concentrate on what I was reading because I kept looking out the window and enjoying the view.

We then decided to explore the library and I made Brian pose for an impromptu photo shoot and to practice my non-existent photography skills. I knew I wanted to shoot in the red hallway that I have seen on so many Seattle photography blogs. 

A few shots from our photo shoot 

in the red hallway

As I stated before, Brian and I were planning to stay in for Valentine's Day dinner. Yesterday I got Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc at Home cookbook and picked out three recipes for our dinner. After our photo shoot we headed to Pike Place Market to get all of the ingredients we needed.  The market was packed with shoppers as usual. We stopped at a few booths and headed home to get started on dinner.

Little Gem Lettuce Salad

The recipe called for Little Gem lettuce but I couldn't find any so I used mixed baby greens instead.  The different citrus fruits in this recipe really worked well with the honey vinaigrette. Citrus is currently in season so the flavors really popped. The walnuts were toasted in the oven and sprinkled with kosher salt as it cooled. The walnuts added a well balanced nutty flavor with a slight sweetness as well.

Pan-Roasted Halibut

This was a very simple recipe with simple ingredients. It was just halibut, kosher salt, canola oil, extra virgin olive oil, and fleur de sel. This recipe highlights how food can still be delicious and delicate even with minimal and ordinary ingredients. I paired this with just plain calrose rice and served over a bed of hedgehog mushrooms w/ baby arugula.

Hedgehog Mushrooms with Baby Arugula

All three of these dishes are adaptations from Ad Hoc at Home. I didn't have all the ingredients for each dish so I had to improvise with what I could find at the market and what was in season. A good tip to remember is to talk to the vendors at the produce stands. Tell them what you are looking for and they can help find comparable substitutions. We enjoyed these recipes and their flavor profiles.

These are the only three recipes I have tried from his cookbook so far but I can definitely say I look forward to trying more.  The cookbook itself is beautiful and would make a great coffee table book or a gift for any home cooks that you know.

Hope everyone had a great Valentine's Day!