Cheat’s XO pasta & a gooey chocolate cake for Valentine’s Day
High stakes, heartbreak, and a skillet cake that’s gooey in all the right places.
I went to see a hypnotherapist this week to help me with my sleep (it’s a process, so stay tuned… For now, I am sitting on the fence).
I have never been a great sleeper but recently it’s been getting worse, which means I wake a few times in the night and never feel fresh in the mornings.
In reality, does anyone, really?
Sleep is the holy grail of quality of life. Love - to stretch the metaphor - is the holy grail of life itself. If you don’t have them, they feel as elusive as the monster hiding in Loch Ness. If you’re lucky enough to take them for granted, they’re as unremarkable as a morning yawn.
I suppose that Valentine’s Day was invented to wake us up from this jaded slumber and open our eyes to the blessing of having a loved one. So I can see the point, kind of.
The trouble is that even if you’re fortunate enough to have someone to celebrate and be with, you’re not in the clear… It’s all a bit constructed, top heavy, if you ask me.
There’s nothing natural or organic about a worldwide day to celebrate love. You can so easily overdo it and get it wrong. You can also underdo it and get it equally wrong. You can ignore the whole thing, at your peril.
Restaurant staff get to witness all this first-hand. The result is a bank of stories—some sweet, some disastrous. And I always love hearing about them.
A manager at ROVI told me about one Valentine’s Day that turned into a legend with the team... From the very first sip of fizz, the man looked shifty, the woman suspicious. She asked for his phone. Whatever she saw confirmed her worst fears. Then, shouting, tears; and whispers from neighbouring tables. The team sent over some Dutch courage (just for her). She downed it and stormed out to a round of applause… A few hours later, they were spotted ‘making up’ across the street.
Sometimes, something genuinely lovely happens, too.
A charming couple came in for dinner that same evening (what are the odds!) - two men. One of them had emailed ahead to arrange a grand gesture—“Will you marry me?” piped onto the dessert plate. The team was briefed, ready and waiting. But before they could bring it over, his partner beat them to it. He’d nipped to the bar, grabbed two glasses of bubbly, got down on one knee, and proposed…
Whether your Valentine’s Day leans towards grand gestures or public bust-ups, good food makes everything better. And even if you’re just staying in - by yourself, with friends, with family - you might as well cook something worth remembering.
Cheat’s XO sauce for your main course
Angelos had an idea for your main course. A simple spaghetti with a deeply savoury sauce…
In 1980s Hong Kong, when Cognac and ‘XO’ were shorthand for luxury, a chef at Spring Moon had a lightbulb moment. He looked at the bottle of Rémy Martin behind the bar and named his new condiment after it (that had absolutely nothing to do with the drink itself, BTW): XO sauce. Extra old, extra rare, extra expensive.
The sauce was punchy with dried scallops, dried shrimp, chillies, smoky pork, and a heap of alliums—a shortcut to deep, complex flavour.
By the end of the decade, it had made its way onto menus across Hong Kong—and soon, the world.
Traditionally, XO sauce leans on dried seafood, a staple in Hong Kong’s food markets. But we created a cheat version, swapping out the hard-to-find dried seafood for fresh scallops and replacing Jinhua ham with pancetta. The flavours mellow and deepen as it sits in the fridge, so you can make it ahead—leaving you with more time to focus on whatever else you've got planned
You can spoon it onto anything (steamed fish, scrambled eggs, a simple bowl of rice) but I use it as a sauce for spaghetti. Sweet, salty, smoky, and perfect for Valentine’s Day… so you can go full Lady and the Tramp.
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Something sweet to finish
This isn’t necessarily for Valentine’s Day—really, it’s a simple, indulgent chocolate cake that we’ve made to feed two (with a little leftover for breakfast if you’re lucky). And, honestly, it might be one of my favourite things to come out of the test kitchen in a long time.
It’s based on kladdkaka, a Swedish chocolate cake with a particularly gooey centre: the best part of brownie batter, but without the worry of raw eggs.
I took inspiration from Magnus Nilsson (I’ve mentioned him a few times now in my Substack…). If you’ve got The Nordic Baking Book, flip to page 356 for his version. Magnus reckons he eats kladdkaka about once a month and insists it’s one of those rare things that’s always better at home than in a professional kitchen.
In many ways, it breaks all the rules of cake-making: no leavening, barely baked... But it’s quick, effortlessly rich, and incredibly moreish. I whipped some crème fraîche with amaretto for a bit of tang and toasted nuts with cardamom and butter to sprinkle on top. But honestly, the cake does all the heavy lifting.
I realise I keep reaching for the same words—simple, indulgent, deeply chocolatey—but when the cake fits…
A few tips
For maximum gooeyness, 11 minutes is the sweet spot in our oven. If yours runs hot, take it out a minute early. If you want it a little firmer, leave it in for another minute.
This cake is fantastic made ahead—once cooled, store it in an airtight container and gently warm it up in the oven before serving.
If by some miracle you have leftovers, they keep well at room temperature for a day or two (or just eat them for breakfast, as I did…).
And don’t worry if the batter looks a little split—it’s very forgiving.
Gooey chocolate skillet cake with Amaretto crème fraîche
Serves 2 (with some leftovers for breakfast)
Prep 20 mins
Cook 25 mins