My fiance and I recently got engaged, and we celebrated by cooking an amazing dinner that was the perfect balance of indulgent and wedding diet-friendly.
So first off, I know they are "so 2016" but I'm still obsessed with zoodles (spiralized zucchini cut to look like noodles and used as a diet-friendly noodle substitute). When zoodles are properly cooked, they make me not even miss pasta.
I made these by spiralizing two medium zucchinis and salting them and then letting them sit in a colander for a good 15-20 minutes. This step is important because the salt draws out water, and the zoodles end up soggy and tasteless if you skip it. Then I sauteed them over a medium-high heat in the pan in which I had seared the steaks (more on that below) for 4 minutes with a bit of added olive oil + fresh ground black pepper. I let them cook until they were soft but not mushy. This is one of the other benefits of zoodles, they cook so much faster than "normal" pasta. Worth noting that I stopped cooking a little before I would have if I had served the zoodles as a side dish on their own, but because I knew I wanted to plate them under the steak and I knew we wouldn't eat for about 20 more minutes, I knew the steak's residual heat + extra time meant they would keep cooking a bit after I took them off the heat, so you would have adjust for your purposes if you wanted to recreate this. Once they were off the heat I tossed them in my homemade pesto sauce and set them aside in a warm place.
While the zucchini was in the colander prior to cooking, I seared the steaks in a frying pan with just a little salt and black pepper, I then popped them in the oven until medium-rare while we finished cooking the zoodles.
The herbed butter is an amazing but easy finishing touch - you just chop up some fresh chives, basil, and oregano (or whatever you love/have around) and mix the herbs into room temperature (so its soft) butter. I did about 2 tablespoons of herbs per 1 tablespoon of butter because I wanted the herb flavor to be really strong.
Finally, we finished the dish off with some decorative chives on top for fanciness, since getting engaged deserves fanciness.
Anyway, 10/10 would recommend getting engaged and would recommend this dish. Leave me any questions you have below.