An ideal dish for romantic dinner

Primed to romance your certain someone on Valentine's Day? Nothing says "I love you" more persuasively than a home-cooked meal. This one-pot noodle dish, a variation on beef Stroganoff, is the ideal messenger.

Although the roots of the classic recipe are certifiably aristocratic - a French chef working for Count Pavel Stroganoff, a Russian, created it in the early 1800s-beef Stroganoff was being treated pretty roughly in America by the 1960s. At that time, when "convenience" trumped every other value, home cooks loved being able to whip up a fancy main course using canned gravy, canned mushrooms, canned minced onions and canned roast beef.

We're gonna treat it with a little more respect in this recipe. To start, the basics remain unchanged - thin slices of beef fillet topped with a sauce of fresh mushrooms and sour cream, all of it ladled over noodles. But I've beefed up the umami-and intensified the taste - with dried mushrooms, tomato paste and Dijon mustard. Also, we cook the noodles in the sauce, which makes them that much more delicious.