Valentines' Day Dinner Recipe (2024)

Dining at a restaurant on Valentine’s Day is tough. The crowds, wait times and bad service are not fun. Most years my husband and Ichoose to dine at home. Which means I am always trying to come up with recipes to make our Valentine’s dinner special. Tonight I made a Fig, Gorgonzola and Chicken Ravioli with Brown Butter Sauce. I cooked a few portions of ravioli with the sauce so I could taste my recipe. Since I made up the recipe, I thought a taste test might be important. Fortunately, it was fantastic!

Therecipe is listed below but I wanted to share a few cooking tips. The first is howto turn your pasta pink.

I have to be honest and let you know that I have never colored my pasta. I had heard of someone using beets to color the pasta so I decided to give it a try. I roasted the beets for 45 minutes in the oven. Then I chopped them in the food processor. I added boing water to the chopped beets and strained the juice. It worked perfectly!

Valentine’s Day Dinner Recipe – Fig, Gorgonzola and Chicken Ravioli

Make the Pink Pasta

This is what the beet juice looked like. I only used one teaspoon so you don’t need a lot.

I added the beet juice into the pasta dough at the very beginning.

I put the pasta in my KitchenAid pasta machine and made pasta sheets at a thickness of #5.

Next, I cut out heart shaped pasta pieces.

My recipe made about 50 ravioli hearts of pasta.

Prepare the Filling

To make the filling I baked the chicken in the oven. I only used two chicken breasts and then cut and shredded them in the Cuisinart.

For the filling, I mixed chicken, fig jam, gorgonzola cheese,and balsamic vinegar. These flavors, when combined together, are fabulous.

Next, I filled each heart with about one tsp of filling and topped with another heart.

Sealing the ravioli piece is really importantbecause you don’t want the filling leaking out when it is cooked. I thought about using a fork but I don’t think it looks thatgreat. So I pulled out a biscuit cutter and used the edge of the cutter to seal the edges of the ravioli pieces.

Seal the edges all the way around the outside edge.

And store on a piece of parchment paper. You can freeze them for later use or you can cook immediately. They will also store in the refrigerator for a few days.

Cook the Ravioli

The secret to cooking the ravioli is to boil them in a shallow pan. Add only about two inches of water to the pan. This prevents the ravioli from flipping over and breaking while cooking.

To make the brown butter sauce, cook a stick of butter on the stove top until it turns slightly brown. Don’t overcook or burn the butter.

Pour over the cooked pasta and serve. This is so delicious. I know you will love it.