valentine's dinner

no, not with a date sadly. i want to cook for my mother, well, in effect for my family, her birthday's on that day.

anyways, we don't have an oven. any simple recipes that i can do?

preferred cuisine would be french, italian, chinese.

i'd like to say money is no object but it is this means no expensive wine, i'm willing to cough up money for good fish/lamb/steaks but no foie gras, caviar, and the like.

also what goes well with garlic sauce?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

How about a nice hearty stoup? (Thicker than soup, thinner than stew)

If you got about hour and a half to spare to prepare, I can post a fairly simple/easy to do beef-stoup (I gave up on calling it stew since it never really gets that thick)...just takes a while to cook.

Not having an oven meaning you don't have ability to bake, that's it, right?

If you've got a good season-ed cast iron skillet and you're willing to put the work into it, I can see if I can get my mom's stewed-hamburger-steak receipe. It's just basically thick hamburgers with small bits of veggies (which you can skip optionally), stewed in a thick, tomato-demiglas based sauce with onions and mushrooms.

I like to eat both above with a nice bowl of rice on the side but I'm sure western style of dining with bread and salad and side of mashed potato and what not is also very appropriate for the occasion.

My boyfriend's step-mom does heart-shaped hamburgers for the family dinner on Valentines day, which I think is very cute and innovative. The meal itself isn't very fancy, but she does table scapes that are both fun and romantic so it's all about the atmosphere.

And also lastly to answer the garlic sauce question, basically any sort of starchy grain / vegitable based product would be appropriate for garlic. Bread and/or pasta is almost said to be much better with garlic, my favorite veggies I like to infuse garlic flavor when I'm cooking them are things like grean beans, asparagus, broccoli, spinach.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

ok sure fire away

i however forgot to mention that both my parents refuse to eat beef. so should i use ground pork for the hamburger mix?

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.