A little late, admittedly, for anyone looking for inspiration for a Valentines meal, but these could be used for a non-Valentine’s romantic meal instead, perhaps. It’s not the only day of the year that romance is allowed!

I lifted the first two courses from proper chefs; Gordon Ramsay for the Prawn Toast and Bill Granger for the Caramel Salmon. The good thing about this three course meal is that the preparation required is probably less than 20 mins in total, with the cooking time about half that.

The recipe for the prawn toast can be found at http://www.channel4.com/life/microsites/F/fword/dublinprawn.html. Instead of using langoustines, I bought pre-cooked king prawns. I have cooked this before and it’s much nicer than the prawn toast you get deep fried with a Chinese takeaway and far healthier, too.

The caramel salmon recipe can be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/database/caramelsalmon_85220.shtml. The salmon has a beautiful sweet taste mixed in with the sour of the fish sauce. It is more of a summery dish, but I wanted to keep the main course light, considering there was dessert to come. I also opted to serve the salmon with a mixed salad instead of rice for the same reason, plus the fact we’d had carbohydrates in the prawn toast already.

The eton mess recipe can be found at Jim’s Eton Mess. I used grapes, blueberries, amaretti biscuits, Bahlsen chocolate wafer biscuits and a small pot of double cream. Simple and delicious.

I think I’ll have to do something extremely bad to use up all the brownie points I earned with this one!