Love food

Oysters [Photo by Pauline D. Loh/China Daily]

When you first fall in love, every day is Valentine's Day, but after the fireworks fade, we all benefit from the occasional reminder that relationships require high maintenance. Pauline D. Loh shares a few recipes to keep sweethearts happy.

Nothing kick-starts romance like a candle-lit dinner, especially if it's home cooked. It is like a full display of peacock feathers in courtship. The human animal, bereft of natural, colorful plumage, can choose to impress instead with food adorned with love. And the range of seductive food is enormous. There are certainly more than 50 ways to feed your lover, and creativity can be inspired by shape, flavor, fragrance or aphrodisiacal qualities.

Man has been looking for food to enhance love and libido ever since Cupid shot his first arrows. In China, it is almost a dedicated art to find those magic ingredients that would make a tiger out of a man and a kitten out of a woman. Unfortunately, many are artifice more than fact.

Forget your animal appendage tonics - romance starts with a state of the mind, and the trick is to feed the imagination. Think about indulging the senses with a meal that shows the love of your life that you would stop at nothing to please him, or her. Especially the details.

Of course, there are certain foods that are traditionally supposed to enhance your readiness to mate - such as chocolate, champagne and caviar, the classic three Cs of culinary seduction.

With quality ingredients so readily available these days, you can set the mood for love in the comfort of your home, and you really do not need a Cordon Bleu certificate to pull it off.

Just as an artist chooses a palette of colors for a painted masterpiece, a cook with a purpose needs to understand the ingredients.