Recipes and Menus for February

Saucy Dressings aims to complete this post – four weeks’ menus and recipes, plus a few spare by the end of 2023.
Every year an additional week’s menu, with the links to the individual recipes, is added.
For food in season in February, follow this link.
For eleven pieces of pink and rosy music to cook to in February, follow this link.
You might also be interested in these posts:
- Eight romantic and not too soppy films for Valentine’s Day
- Poleaxed peaches and oranges to celebrate the battaglia delle arance
- How the make the best, and the fluffiest, pancakes, what to put in them, and what have MPs got to do with it
- Wonders of the Woodspeen – Peter Eaton’s do-it-yourself menu for Valentine’s Day
Week’s menu for February: number one

This month I’m off to the States so I’ll be looking into brownies and chocolate chip cookies; and drinking an appropriate Manhattan. We have Valentine’s Day – excuse for all food and drink pink, red, heart-shaped and chocolate. 19th February 2015 heralds the new Chinese Year of the Sheep (or goat) – so we’ll be exploring mutton and the goats’ cheese, Riblaire.
Purple sprouting is the new vegetable on the block so we’ll be incorporating that first taste of spring into some recipes to pep up our winter-jaded palates.
There is also Pancake Day – follow this link for how to make pancakes.
Saturday lunch:
- Chinese eggs with tomatoes which I learnt to make and eat in China
OR
OR
- pretty paneer with spinach, peas and dark, grainy rice and a golden lemony sauce – a hearty and different vegetarian lunch
FOLLOWED BY
- the best classic recipe for chocolate chip cookies which I learnt to make in Canada
Sunday lunch:
Short-cut roast chicken with gravy – a gift from the goddess of love
Edouard de Pomiane’s creamy tomatoes
Sunday evening:
Monday evening chicken:
- chicken tagine with preserved lemons and other north African ingredients
OR
Tuesday evening:
- leftovers or night out!
Wednesday evening meat:
OR
AND
Thursday evening dinner party:
- with drinks: baked whole fig with goats’ cheese wrapped in Parma ham
- starter: roast peppers with tomatoes
OR
- starter: Röperhof-inspired frothy white goat cheese, rolled in crispy breadcrumbs, with red grapes
- main course: utmost of chicken fried in bother macao
- pudding: chocolate mousse with plums in crème de cassis
OR
Thank God it’s Friday drink:
Friday evening fish:
Week’s menu for February: number two

“Now from his breast into the eyes the ache
Homer, The Odyssey
of longing mounted, and he wept at last,
his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms,
longed for as the sunwarmed earth is longed for by a swimmer
spent in rough water where his ship went down
under Poseidon’s blows, gale winds and tons of sea.
Few men can keep alive through a big serf
to crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches
in joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind:
and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband,
her white arms round him pressed as though forever.”
Saturday lunch:
- concocted cabbage collation – an unusual pairing of cabbage with avocado, which you can make into a hearty lunch by adding nutty lentils
OR
OR
Sunday brunch
Sunday evening pasta or rice:
OR
Monday evening rabbit-chicken-prawn:
Tuesday evening:
Leftovers or night out!
Wednesday evening meat:
- duckkeeper’s pie – with confit of duck
OR
Valentine’s dinner for two:
Conceived to reduce cooking time to a minimum… plenty of time for ….other things:
- cup and saucer prawn and fennel – instant in the microwave
- rhyming venison wellington with sweetheart cabbage and cranberries
- blood orange sorbet with crunchy zest biscuits
- finished with some deep orangy red mimolette cheese and black charcoal hearts
- and a selection of slightly-less-soppy romantic films
Thank God It’s Friday Drink
Friday evening fish:
OR
Week’s menu for February: number three

“‘As the days lengthen, the cold strengthens’ is an old country saying. February brings the severe frosts and the snow….. But while the sun glows low and red above the frozen fields there is shelter and comparative warmth in the coppice. Here men are busy felling the undergrowth. Black they look against the thin covering of shining snow on the ground, all varieties of colour lost in their contrasting depth of tone.”
Clare Leighton, The Farmer’s Year: A Calendar of English Husbandry
Saturday lunch:
OR
AND
- rich, crisp, chocolatey mustard biscuits
A winter Sunday lunch:
Sunday supper:
Monday evening meat:
Tuesday evening:
- Leftovers or night out!
Wednesday evening poultry:
- One-pot lemon chicken with artichokes and mushrooms
OR
Thursday evening dinner party:
- with drinks: married-all-along chipolatas with mustard mayonnaise
- starter: La bohème smoked salmon roulade
- main course: luscious and lovely filo lamb pie
- vegetable: tzatziki-coated courgettes and pecans
- pudding: poleaxed peaches and oranges
Thank God It’s Friday drink:
OR
- Monkey Business! Whisky with apple balsamic vinegar
….. and to eat with it: - almonds and manchego British-style
Friday evening fish:
- Clement Freud’s spiced salmon
- Roman gnocchi
- Chinese aubergines and garlic
Week’s menu for February: number four

“The sky is gone. It is not clouded, it is swathed in gloom. Upwards the still air thickens and there is no arch or vault of heaven. Formless and vague, it seems like some vast shadow descending. The sun has disappeared and the light there still is, is left in the atmosphere enclosed by the gloomy mist as pools are left by a receding tide.”
Richard Jeffries, Haunts of the Lapwing, 1883
Saturday lunch:
- zucchini nuraghe
OR
AND
Sunday supper:
OR
Monday evening meat:
- roast rose veal with rose vermouth sauce
Tuesday evening:
Leftovers or night out!
Wednesday evening poultry:
Thursday evening dinner party:
- with drinks: Yashim’s Hummus
- starter: cod with black pudding and banana
OR
- starter: a simple, smokey, rosy salmon mousse
- main course: venison fillet with
- Brazilian style shredded greens anointed with Brazilian garlic oil
- AND/OR aloo palak – potatoes with spinach
- pudding: chocolate and orange mousse
Thank God It’s Friday drink:
- red hot, super-cool lipstick cocktail from Kong in Paris
- sticky city cocktail sausages
Friday evening fish:
- Vineet-inspired black lentils and prawns
OR
AND