If you really loved me, you’d...cook me dinner. I don’t need fancy restaurants, silver service and towering prices. I would rather you thought about what I would love to eat and what you would love to cook for me, then did it.

The normal emotional blackmail of Valentine’s Day doesn’t work for everyone — the silly cards, the flowers, the chocolate (well, OK, maybe the chocolate). What does work is a bit of time and attention — love, in fact — put into a delicious meal that two can share. And knowledge. The fact that you know me so well, that you know I prefer barbecued sardines to grilled salmon, that I’ll drink red wine with anything (sorry, Jane MacQuitty), and will sulk if there are no seconds.

But really, your choices are still wide open. You could, for instance, stick to the tried-and-true — smoked salmon on toast, a great little rib-eye steak with interesting potatoes, and chocolate mousse. Or you could explore the wonderful world of supposed aphrodisiacs, which would mean a menu of shellfish, warming spices, ginger, truffles, ginseng, pomegranates, yoghurt, honey and chocolate, not to mention ambergris, camel’s milk, bull’s blood and cocks’ combs.

Or create the seductive menu on this page, starting with seared scallops and a lemon-cream pasta (or just the lemon-cream pasta if you’ve put all your money into a present); and going on to a choice of spicy, sticky honey soy chicken or that nostalgic favourite, steak Diane.

To finish, chocolate crêpes with crunchy honeycomb cream, or that box of chocolates you’ve been hiding for a week now.

Then (magnaminously) I’ll do the dishes. That’s love for you.

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Ingredients
Feeds 2. Takes 30 mins.

Hand-dived scallops are expensive (around £1 each), but worth it. You’ll need two or three each, depending on their size, to make a very special starter served on a nest of fine pasta coated in a creamy lemon sauce. Avoid scallops that have been soaked in water, as the water will come out in the pan and they will stew instead of sear.

100g fine pasta, eg, linguine, thin tagliatelle
6 large sea scallops
1tbsp olive oil
1tbsp snipped chives
Sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1tsp grated lemon rind

FOR THE LEMON CREAM SAUCE:

1tbsp butter
1tsp grated lemon rind
50ml dry white wine
1tbsp crème fraîche
1tsp lemon juice
Pinch of cayenne pepper
Sea salt and pepper

Cook the pasta in boiling salted water until tender, then drain and keep warm. To make the sauce, heat the butter in a frying pan and cook the lemon rind for 30 seconds. Add the white wine and allow to bubble away, stirring well until reduced in volume by half. Add the crème fraîche and cook for one minute, stirring. Add the lemon juice, cayenne, sea salt and pepper, and keep warm.

Rinse and dry the scallops. Heat the olive oil in a medium-hot non-stick frying pan and sear the scallops on one side, without moving, for two minutes, until they are lightly browned and crusty. Turn and cook the other side briefly — you want the scallops to be hot in the middle but still moist.

Reheat the sauce, add the pasta and the chives and heat through. Arrange the pasta in nests on two warm dinner plates. Season the scallops well with salt and pepper, then arrange three scallops on each plate. Scatter with grated lemon rind and serve hot.

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