Valentines day dinner

This Valentine's Day, we put the kids to bed early and prepared a DELICIOUS dinner. We love the lobster risotto tuna dish at Aqua Terra, a great restaurant in Buford. Seth and I decided to attempt to recreate it. I think we did pretty good!

We combined one recipe from The Food Network (Giada De Laurentiis's butternut squash risotto) and one from AllRecipes.com (Lobster Risotto with Peas). We served our lobster risotto with tuna steak and a salad. 

Lobster Risotto

4 cups chicken broth

1 large vanilla bean

(2) 6 ounce lobster tails, thawed if frozen

2 tablespoons butter, plus 1 tablespoon butter

3/4 cup sweet onion (finely chopped)

1 1/2 cups arborio rice

1/2 cup dry white wine

1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese

In a medium saucepan, warm the broth over medium-high heat. Cut the vanilla bean in half lengthwise. Scrape out the seeds and add them, and the bean, to the broth.  Add lobster tails; reduce heat. Simmer gently 4 to 5 minutes or until shells turn bright red and lobster meat is opaque. Remove lobster from broth; let cool at least 10 minutes. Keep broth warm over low heat.Turn the heat on the broth down to very low and cover to keep warm.Meanwhile, in a large, heavy saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons of the butter over medium heat. Add the onion and saute until tender but not brown, about 3 minutes. Add the rice and stir to coat with the butter. Add the wine and simmer until the wine has almost completely evaporated, about 3 minutes. Add 1/2 cup of the simmering broth and stir until almost completely absorbed, about 2 minutes. Continue cooking the rice, adding the broth 1/2 cup at a time, stirring constantly and allowing each addition to of the broth to absorb before adding the next, until the rice is tender but still firm to the bite and the mixture is creamy, about 20 minutes total. Meanwhile, shell lobster; cut the meat into 1/2-inch thick chunks. Discard the vanilla bean. Turn off the heat.Gently stir in the lobster, parmesan, the remaining tablespoon of butter, and salt. Transfer the risotto to a serving bowl and enjoy!

Stirring the risotto is a full time job! 

We marinaded the tuna steaks in orange juice, soy sauce, olive oil, and lemon juice for about 4 hours. Seth barely grilled it on the cooktop and it was magnificent. 

The finished tuna- perfectly prepared

The risotto was amazing! It was creamy with just a hint of vanilla and did I mention it had LOBSTER? A bite of this mixed with a bite of tuna and you were in heaven!

My sweet Valentine- we had a great stay at home date night and it was so much fun cooking together

Our dessert was Little Debbie Valentine's Cakes. Don't they look fancy on our fine china? Dessert was obviously an after thought!