Valentine's Day could almost rival the anchovy in its intrinsic power to polarize opinion.

It goes without saying that avid revellers are most probably couples who view this as the perfect opportunity to express, if not glory in, the love straddling them. While I cannot empathize with this, I can sympathize.

Members from the Opposition argue that revellers are blindly buying into candy-coloured froth, going insofar as pointing out that chickens only weigh as much as you stuff them. And this comes from the mouths of people who have deemed this a cause worthy enough to rebel against.

The major grouse among the haters is the insidious bastardisation conducted by commercial forces during this period, with marketing campaigns cartoonifying the concept of love with heart-shaped balloons and pastel-pink cards. And if I'm being honest, the result is often cloying and disingenuous. This treatment has also instilled a terrible equation where love is proportional to the money spent on gifts, leaving owners of already wan wallets begging for mercy.

Then there are the more self-centred arguments. It is, to some, just a unsatisfactory compensation for 355 days worth of neglect. Fretful singles feel annoyed by the barrage of advertisement that only conspires to underscore their desperation. But perhaps you, like me, are more focused on lamenting it not being a much-needed public holiday. Indeed, I am convinced half the haters would be converted if it were.

But recently I have found another, bigger bone to pick. With the plethora of 'For Two' specials at cinemas, restaurants and cafes, I as well as a few friends, have begun to feel a little left out. And, with the absence of a day dedicated to celebrating singlehood, it is hard not to feel punished.

You, the reader, might be feeling similarly. You might be seething silently. You might be persuading yourself that love is overrated and you are not hypocrite. You might be plainly wishing that woe soon betide lovers everywhere. Or you could just do something constructive. Not kill. You can cook.

An Anti-Valentine's Day dinner, as aforementioned, would not just be a lousy rebellion, it would be one with no audience. So we are not going to have any of that. This one is for everybody.

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Watercress Soup with Oysters and Croutons
White Velvet Pasta
Poached Salmon, Gribiche
Toad In A Hole
Sparkling Rose Jellies
Chocolate and Red Wine Pear Pudding

Watercress Soup, Oysters, Croutons

An absolute knock-out, this one; it tastes every bit as sophisticated as it looks. I cannot accept any credit for it, really: this soup is strongly inspired by a Nettle soup Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall rustled up on his Beyond The River Cottage series for a Valentine's Day dinner.

Forgivable as it might be to regard the oysters - Belon, for preference - as a rather frivolous posh adjunct, its ozony, winey poaching liquor actually gives an incredible body to the soup. And perhaps most importantly, it is apparently does wonders for the libido.

Now, a word on the croutons: I refer to rounds stamped out from regular plastic bread and fried golden in olive oil. Obviously, they need not be circular, the idea is to produce crunchy, toothsome rafts spacious enough for the oysters to drift on.

Ingredients
30g unsalted butter
A garlic clove, peeled and crushed
A medium leek, rinsed and sliced
1 medium Russet potato, peeled and cut into 2 cm chunks
200g watercress, tough and thick stalks removed
700ml light chicken stock
100ml single cream

To serve
4 fresh Belon oysters, shucked
4 fried croutons, see above
125ml white wine
More single cream

Method
Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed, deep saucepan and add the crushed garlic. Push it around for a minute before adding sliced leek. Sweat for 5 minutes and drop in the chunked potato. Heap in the watercress, pressing the copse down as you go. Deluge in stock and simmer gently for about 15 minutes, till both potato and watercress are soft. Cool slightly, liquidise and return to the saucepan. Should this soup not be hitting the table presto pronto, whack on the lid and you can return to it later. It seems to grow more verdant this way.

Come meal time, poach the oysters for no more than a minute in a baby saucepan of bubbling wine. Meanwhile, rechauffe the soup. Retrieve the oysters and tip the ozony, winy liquor into the soup, along with the cream. Stir. Ladle into wide, shallow soup bowls. Float 2 fried croutons and sweetly perch an oyster on top each one. Dribble over more single cream and some bitingly green extra virgin olive oil.

Serves 2.

White Velvet Pasta

You are going to have to shake off any harboured prejudices against cream-based pastas for this.As the name suggests, the sauce really is a sheer, lubricious raiment of buttered cream with a muted purr of lemon rippling right through.

It is mandatory to use fresh pasta for this because dried pasta does not give you that soft, malleable, silkiness that suits this delicate sauce.

Ingredients
8125g fresh tagliatelle
60ml double cream
30g unsalted butter
Zest of half lemon, a tablespoon of its juice
Salt, ground white pepper
Parmesan, to serve

Method
Heat the cream in a roomy saucepan, tranquilly, as the pasta cooks in an adjacent pot of salted, raging water. This will take the briefest of moments, scarcely 3 minutes, since the pasta is fresh.

Fish out a strand and test for doneness. If it is all right, immediately drain and tumble into the warmed cream. Dollop in the butter, salt and pepper, and finally sprinkle over the fragrant zest and juice. Toss it well.Taste to season with salt and white pepper. If you feel you want more juice or zest, go ahead.

Tong onto hot plates, best done in a low oven, and shower with parmesan curls.

Serves 1.

Poached Salmon, Sauce Gribiche

I would normally fry salmon, because I love how its skin crisps up. But that often leaves the most unsexy pong in the kitchen. Poaching, with the absence of hot oil, takes care of this. It is far more relaxing anyway. Do not throw away the poaching liquor. It is so good to braise thin-sliced waxy potatoes, like Ratte, to go with.

Ingredients
2 tarragon sprigs
1 bay leaf
A bunch of flat-leaf parsley
A head of garlic, halved horizontally
A teaspoon of black peppercorns
1 and a half teaspoons sea salt
500ml water
600ml dry white wine
A 600g filleted and boned slab of salmon

For the sauce gribiche
1 hard boiled egg
4 cornichons, finely chopped
1 tablespoon salted capers, rinsed and finely chopped
2 red shallots, peeled and finely chopped
2 tablespoons flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
1 tablespoon fresh tarragon leaves, finely chopped
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
4 tablespoons best extra virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly milled black pepper

Method
Select a pan just big enough to snugly fit the slab of salmon. Into this pan put everything required for the poaching liquid and simmer gently over medium heat for 15 minutes. Lower the salmon slab into the hot, herbal bath and baste with the hot liquid. Bubble very gently for 6 minutes, then off the heat and let it rest for 5.

Make the sauce gribiche by finely chopping the egg white and yolk and placing it into a bowl. Add the remaining ingredients, mix and season to taste.

Carve the salmon, which should be pink in the centre. Dribble over the sauce.

Serves 3.

Toad In a Hole

How can you resist a banger on Valentine's Day? More to the point, how can you resist having three? Procure them from a good butcher or delicatessen. You want them thick and well-seasoned. A lot of sausages tend to be oversalted.

In my rendition, the toad is not quite in the hole, if you like. The sausages are cooked on the stove with wine which produces a lovely saucy flavouring, and Yorkshire pudding gets whopped in the oven as one would for an English Sunday lunch with roast beef and the works. This makes boosting quantities for a larger crowd a more manageable task.

Ingredients
9 fresh, good-quality pork sausages
A bunch of sage leaves
50ml garlic olive oil
2 large onions, peeled and thinly sliced
300ml veal stock
200ml red wine
1 tablespoon Worchestershire sauce

For the Yorkshire pudding
1 egg
60ml milk, thinned with 2 tablespoons water
1 teaspoon mustard powder
50g plain flour, sifted
A quarter teaspoon salt
6 x 2 teaspoons vegetable oil

Whisk the egg and thinned milk with salt and let it stand for 15 minutes, minimum. Preheat the oven to 200C. Lubricate each hole of a 6-bun muffin tin with 2 teaspoons of oil and feed this into the oven to heat up.

Sweat the onion crescents in the garlic-infused olive oil to a romantic softness. Add the sage leaves, fry a minute longer and tip everything out onto a bowl or saucer. Lovingly add the sausages to the hot frying pan, pressing and stroking with tongs to get them gorgeously bronzed. Cook them for 10 minutes, juddering the pan sporadically to guarantee an even tan.

Meanwhile, whisk the mustard powder and plain flour into milky egg mixture. Retrieve the now smoking hot muffin tin and rapidly divide this batter among the bun-holes. Urgently return to the oven and bake for 15 - 20 minutes to an almost nuclear bouffant.

Return to your sausages now: Add the stock, wine, Worchestershire sauce and sage-onions. Simmer for another 7 - 10 minutes or till the liquid is seductively syrupy and the sausages taut. Don't worry if both parties - toad and hole - fail to finish simultaneously. A little reprieve from all that action is not at all ruinous and gives you time to wash up.

Serve 3 bangers and 2 Yorkies, per person and pour over the gravy.

Serves 3.

Sparkling Rose Jellies

Jellies are such easy puddings to knock up. Barely any cooking is involved and they live very gaily in the fridge. Just remember to let them stand at room temperature for about 7 - 10 minutes to loosen up a little.

These jellies are made of sparkling rose wine because that is what I love, By all means, replace it with champagne if you want something drier. If you do not have vanilla or tangerine sugar, then drop a split pod of vanilla or a few shards of dried tangerine peel into the bottle of bubbly overnight.

You do this because a plain stovetop infusion would remove a lot of that desirable fizz.

Ingredients
150ml sparkling rose wine
1 sheet leaf gelatine
1 tablespoon vanilla or tangerine sugar

In the teeniest saucepan, heat 50ml of the wine and sugar. A feeble warmth is what you want, nothing more. Remove from heat.

Slip the gelatine leaf into a shallow receptacle of water. Once it jellifies into a sticky alienate substance, squeeze and drop into the warmed wine. Whisk to dissolve. Pour over the remaining wine, whisk again, and let cool a little while longer before pouring to a 150ml mould lubricated with a smidgeon of vegetable oil. Refrigerate for 4 - 5 hours or overnight for greater convenience.

Let it dwell at room temperature for 15 minutes before turning out onto a plate and serving with fruit of choice; I think a rhapsody of blackberries, raspberries and red currants is a delicious, elegant accompaniment, or even thin slices of ripe white peach. Whatever the choice, swirl over single cream redolent with a drop of rosewater for a truly cosseting, luxurious touch.

Serves 1.

Chocolate and Red Wine Pear Puddings

If you want to rot in voluptuary, then this is the pudding for you: little baked chocolate puddings with molten bellies ruptured with soft, soft, soft morsels of pear braised in red wine. I have come to look upon these sort of fete cute with disdain since they appear in almost every restaurant menu these days. But I think the occasional cameo is most welcome.

Ingredients
1 large, ripe pear, peeled, cored and cut into 1.5 cm chunks
2 cm cinnamon stick
200ml red wine
175g dark chocolate
30g unsalted butter, melted
60g light muscovado sugar
2 eggs
A quarter teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons flour, sifted

Method
Place the pear, cinnamon stick and red wine in a saucepan and simmer gently until very soft. The pear will be swimming in wine still.

Preheat the oven to 190 C.

Melt the chocolate with the butter in a double boiler. Pour in the wine from the pears and cool slightly.

In an electric free-standing mixer, beat the eggs, sugar and salt till cappuccino-blond, thick and triple its original volume. Pour the melted chocolate around the batter's periphery and sift the flour straight its belly. Fold very gently until the batter is homogenous. Take your time. This might take you up to 5 minutes. Relax.

Spoon 2 tablespoons of batter into each of 4 greased metallic 175ml pudding tins. Divide the wine-stained pear cubes among the tins, followed by the remaining batter. Bake for 10 minutes. It will rise slightly and quiver almost too much for comfort, but it has to stand for another 5 minutes, during which it will solidify slightly.

Unveil on individual serving plates and serve with chilled pouring cream or creme fraiche.

Serves 4.