My Butter Half
Valentine's Day is a funny holiday for us. Let's start with our first year together, then you may be able to understand more of why it is funny. Our first Valentine's Day together was actually going to be just one month (exactly) after we first became official, so we actually decided to celebrate together the weekend before - on February 7th. We ended up saying we loved each other that day, so now, every year, we celebrate Valentine's Day an entire week before everyone else. It used to be ideal when it came to making dinner reservations...now, doesn't make so much of a difference.
One of the things we, like everyone else, really miss now-a-days has been going out to dinner. While John is an excellent cook, and can make such a variety, we miss being able to get a bunch of different dishes and try everything, or simply eating things that John can't make or recreate. So for Valentine's Day, we went with one of those experiences....and enjoyed sushi!
John has definitely gotten pretty good at making sushi rice, and we've enjoyed some sashimi and sushi rice throughout the pandemic, but it is a little different than the full array we could get from ordering it. John decided where we would be ordering from, since I had been in charge of dessert (which similarly, we went with something both special to our relationship and difficult to recreate - Bottega Louie). More on dessert later.
From Tsujita, we ordered assorted Nigiri, Hokkaido Kaisen (rice topped with seafood), and Edomae Tendon (tempura). I had definitely forgotten how good tempura was - it was such a light fry and I loved the variety of items included in the tempura as well. Like sweet potato, shrimp, a fish cake (we think), I mean - tempura even made broccoli taste good (as many of you probably know, broccoli is my least favorite food). Then we had the fish - some of it was sashimi, similar to what John makes, but the real star of the show was the nigiri.
As much as John and I have enjoyed sushi over the years, and it has been quite a bit, we had a bit of a hard time identifying all the fish. One of the definite drawbacks of eating it like this was that there was a lot of guessing involved. However, some of our favorites floated to the top - and they both had a different topping or flavor boost than solely wasabi. The scallop with yuzu relish was so divine - in general, the scallops this meal were even better than our typical favorite, salmon - and our other favorite was a hamachi with shiso leaf.
Then we had dessert....which, unsurprisingly, I got too much of. But in fairness, it was meant to be enjoyed over a few days, so leftovers were fine. We opened up our boxes from Bottega Louie and it was 28 macarons (all flavors) and a cake that had John's favorite combo - raspberry and chocolate. The cake was gone first because it was so incredible. I aspire to be able to make a cake like that, with such a beautiful glaze and such even layers. The macarons we enjoyed over the next few days, with our favorites mostly being the fruit-flavored ones, as they had either curd or buttercream, with jam or something in the middle.
Overall, the food was pretty incredible, especially because it meant pretty much zero clean-up!
