Marie Guaragna: Hi, I am Marie Guaragna with MGB Special Events in Arlington, Virginia and today, I am showing you how to make a romantic dinner for two for your special valentine and right now we are going to work on the Escargot or appetizer for today and this is what you are going to need in order to do it. We are going to need some nice dishes for baking Escargot, if you have them, if not you could take a Pyrex dish, just anything that's oven safe and you can put it in the oven that way. We are going to need some garlic, some chopped fresh chives, some cleaned and rinsed escargot, salt, I like to use white pepper for this, some cooking sherry. We will need some butter, softened already, a bowl, a fork and a garlic press.

So, let's get started on our escargot appetizer. So, make sure that you thoroughly rinse off your escargot under cool water. Use a colander or you could use a bowl that you could see there is -- it's not that this is bad, but there is little parts in them. Just gently rinsing, you could run them under. If there is anything that's hanging on just pull it off nice and then we are going to go ahead and pat them dry and we are going to use six, six for me and six for you for your romantic date for Valentine's Day and remember always wash your hands. We have already got it softened, so I like to use a fork just to mix it up, get it nice and mushy. We are going to take probably two or three cloves of garlic, can't have enough garlic and we are pressing it, so that all that really getting out of it is really the garlic juice. The skin we can toss aside, press another one. You could chop this if you want, but I love using the garlic pressed; it's so simple, it's so easy and I like the results of it that I get out of it.

Now, I am going to probably do -- I mean really doing 12 escargots today. Six for me six for you and somewhat I use about three cloves of garlic I guess. Okay that's done. Just some chives, I guess, maybe a tablespoon or tablespoon-and-a-half, little salt. I like to use white pepper. I don't know because it doesn't show up as much. It is a little bit stronger, so you have to go a little easier on it than you would regular, pepper and then cooking sherry. You can get this at the grocery store. You don't have to buy an expensive sherry, just any kind of cooking sherry and I am going to slowly put that in until I figure, after I get the right consistency and I might have to add more of it. For the being time, I am just going to add just a little bit and just marry all these ingredients together and you can smell it already. It smells wonderful.

You can use this as a basis for so many other different things. You could use this as a butter on filays. Today we are not going to do that. You could use this on fish. You could use it on chicken. Just about anything; it's just a wonderful base to make your food taste so well. Mix that all up together. Now, in our handy dandy little escargot dishes here, I am going to go ahead and I am just going to put a little dollop, let's do this way, just a little dollop at the bottom of each one of these, just see that when we put the escargot and it doesn't burn or has a nice little base on the bottom.

Now, as it cooks, it's going to totally submerge the little escargot. That's what exactly what we want to do. Alright it's mine; now, of course if you have extra of this, it's not a problem. I'd rather have more than lasts, don't have to go back and do all the steps again. Alright and this is a very very simple appetizer, but it's sure to please your valentine. Alright, now we are just going to simple take an escargot, pop it in there. The nice thing about these dishes is that there is room to have it to butter when it melts to cover it up and you see there is a little rim here makes it nice. Just pop each one of those in. Hopefully I counted right; perfect. Now, we are going to take the rest of our butter and just put it on top and I tell you this is so good especially after you have eaten all your escargot, then you want to take some nice bread and dip it in this juice, it's so good.

Now, I have already got my oven preheated at 350, then it really does not take very long to cook this. Fifteen, eighteen minutes or until it's bubbling because the escargot is already cooked, so you're just going to get it basically, good and hot and it's usually only 15 or 18 minutes. I like to put it on a cookie sheet; in case it does happen to overflow, it's got lined with tinfoil and it won't make your oven all messy. So, let's go on over to the oven. So, here we have our escargot; it's been in the oven for 15 minutes at 350 and as you will see, you know, it's ready because it's nice and bubbly and hot and it is gorgeous. Look at that and it just smells so amazing. I wish you could smell it and this is wonderful way to start-off your romantic valentine's dinner and next we are going to make our boursin scalloped potatoes.