Love Food - St Valentine's Day Feasts Made Easy

The absolute last thing one wants when organizing a romantic, and seductive, dinner for two is the proverbial headache. This fail-safe and stress-free Valentine’s menu is guaranteed to warm the cockles of your loved one’s heart - or vice versa! Using only ingredients that are aphrodisiacs, these simple recipes will excite more than just the taste buds!

Although aphrodisiacs have been the subject of folklore since Aphrodite first put her lovely name to them, scientists are substantiating the belief that there really are certain in-the-mood foods. Italian pharmacists recently discovered that oysters contain compounds that are effective in releasing mood enhancing hormones. Long before this breakthrough Casanova is said to have eaten 50 raw oysters every morning to help him maintain his momentum.

To start your feast what could be easier than a plate of raw Galway Bay oysters from Sopers, the famous fishmongers in Nunhead? Allow 6 oysters each and serve with plenty of lemon and Tabasco sauce on a bed of crushed ice. Sparing any unnecessary Valentine’s Day massacres Sopers will even shuck your oysters for you. Moxons on Lorsdship Lane has delicious cultivated oysters from Colchester at only 65 pence each. Both are much more ecologically sound than the commercially dredged versions.

Other mineral rich seafood, such as scallops, rate high on the aphrodisiac scale: containing selenium, zinc, phosphorus and iodine. For your main course flash fry scallops, one minute each side, in hot butter. Moxon’s Cornish scallops are tastier than supermarket alternatives – look for the coral coloured roe, which falls off when scallops are frozen. Pile your scallops on a vitamin-rich bed of pea puree. The humble pea, believe it or not, is name checked in the Perfumed Garden - the 16th Century treatise on the art of love – as an ancient arouser. Meat-eaters can garnish with a rasher or two of crispy, smoky bacon. For the pea puree simply boil two mugs of frozen peas in a little salted water: strain, add butter and blitz with a hand held blender.

A glass of Champagne always melts the ice, however, mixed in equal proportions with Guinness you have a fortified, iron-rich (iron helps to move the chi) Black Velvet, a cocktail that will fuel the flames of passion.

Bring fresh fruit to the table in Roullier White’s heart-shaped dishes and dip in molten Green and Black’s white chocolate from SMBS Foods; spice them up with a sprinkle of cinnamon.

Finally snuggle up with delicious homemade Gilded Cherry Nipple chocolates from Hope & Greenwood and a glass of Amaretto Disaronno, the intoxicating apricot kernel content of which is referred to in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Pop into Roullier White's East Dulwich Store, 125 Lordship Lane, East Dulwich, London SE22 8HU for oyster forks and crystal champagne flutes or shop online at www.roullierwhite.com