Valentine's cook-off

While Britney Spears dined out on a drive-thru Maccie D's with her beau on Valentine's Day, this year Robert and I set to work in the kitchen.

I love it when you create a delicious meal out of remarkably ugly ingredients. Celeriac or 'knob celery' as it is also known (apparently), is just that. I was keen to take advantage of the celeriac that is still in season so decided to cook Jamie Oliver's potato, celeriac and truffle oil soup.

Truffle oil is great, it makes an average risotto or mash feel really indulgent and it's available in most decent supermarkets these days so is relatively easy to get hold of. I was in Borough market on Saturday morning so picked up a bottle of white truffle oil (it has a more pungent smell than the black variety) from one of the stalls for seven quid.

I was fairly daunted by the celeriac as I've never prepared one before but it was pretty simple- you just take to it with a knife, cut off all the tough brownish exterior, then chop it up like a potato and boil until tender. The soup used chicken stock, floury potatoes and a sprig of thyme which had to be boiled up and simmered for about 40 minutes before liquidising. Some double cream and about 5 tablespoons of the truffle oil and the soup was done. I think Jersualem artichokes would be a good alternative if you don't like celeriacs so that's my next experiment.

Rob covered off the main, we had pulled shoulder of pork which was scored, rubbed thoroughly with salt and pepper and roasted for about 7 hours- it literally fell off the bone and had the perfect crackling!

I had planned to make some chocolate fondants after being inspired by a recent cookery evening with work but decided it might be a bit over-kill after eating half a hog so compromised with some truffles.

I used a recipe of 170g of green and blacks chocolate, a tin of evaporated butter, some butter and crushed digestives. After I was making the finishing touches to the chocs with a dusting of cocoa i saw a bag of amaretti biscuits which I think would have made them a bit more interesting- next time. These went down well at work but aesthetically weren't pretty, they looked like giant animal droppings. I found them a bit rich (funny that, with all the butter and 2 bars of chocolate!) and a bit too biscuity. I'd was hoping they'd have a creamy ganache texture so will ease off the biscuits next time but they weren't bad for a first attempt and tasted better fresh out of the fridge.