The Yum Yum Factor

I have had a serious craving for bun - if you eat Vietnamese food, you know what I'm talking about. A bowl with crisp, shredded romaine lettuce, cold rice noodles, lots of chopped dry roasted peanuts, fresh mint and cilantro, shredded carrots, cucumbers and some sort of sticky, sweet bbq meat that you pour nuoc chom over and then scarf it all down like a maniac because it's so refreshingly delicious that you can't stand it?? Okay, if you don't eat Vietnamese food and don't know what I'm talking about, go find some. Honestly. So my quest today was to make some but I didn't feel like tackling the bbq pork today but The Kid loves meatballs so I thought I would whip up some sort of Vietnamese meatballs out of ground chicken and do a kind of   Bun Ga Nuong . The only thing I was worried about was the sticky, caramelized glaze on the outside when I found this recipe on the Food and Wine web site.  It's from a cook book called Small Bites by Jennifer J...

The Kid and I love egg salad but Shack doesn't. He really can't deal with the smell in the house more than anything so, in the interest of marital harmony, I never make it. We decided that this week, since Shack was out of town, it was time for an egg saladpalooza. We had fresh farmer's eggs so they were especially lovely with deep, golden orange yolks and just full of flavour. I was also craving a BLT and was kind of torn between the two so I thought I would combine the sandwiches into a BET - well, more of a PET since I used pancetta instead of bacon. I loved the little hit of zingy sourness of the pickled spring onions and the crunchy saltiness of the pancetta but otherwise, it's my own basic egg salad recipe. I think that sometimes we strive so hard to do things that are new and unique and cutting edge that we forget about the simple things that we have loved all of our lives. A little tweek here, a little change there but it's still just a really great egg ...

We went to the farmer's market on Sunday and the season's very first organic raspberries were there! Coincidentally, I had made a flourless chocolate cake to take to a bbq that evening and was planning to just make plain old, boring whipped cream to serve with it but the berries changed everything. Suddenly I was whipping out the Chambord and making Chambord Whipped Cream and nice, boozy berries. This is not an earth shattering idea but it is one I wanted to share with you because it was so delicious and not everything that is delicious has to also be earth shattering, right? 1 flourless chocolate cake 500ml whipping cream 1/4 cup sugar 1 1/2 tbls chambord put the cream, the sugar and the chambord in your stand mixer and mix on high for three minutes. 1 pint raspberries 2 tbls chambord 3 tbls sugar juice of half of a lemon mix all the ingredients together and leave to macerate for at least a couple of hours. Cut a piece of cake and serve with a dollop of the ...

I am still trying to get this canning thing down. The Neighbours brought me a flat of beautiful strawberries from the farm and so I decided to make a straight forward jam. I have only made a few jams and they have been fancy pants jams with savoury flavours more suited to eating with cheeses or for roasting meats and I wanted something sweet for The Kid to eat on toast. This recipe from Food In Jars  was prefect for the amount of berries I had to use up and I liked the addition of vanilla. Unfortunately, I realized after it was too late to turn back that I didn't have any more vanilla bean but I did have some nice Mexican vanilla extract and just used a tablespoon of that. I might have used a bit too much in the end and would probably go get some vanilla beans for the next attempt. I have also never used pectin and wanted to try that out as well. All in all, it tastes pretty good, it's not too solid (I like my jams a bit runny) and it was really easy to make. I am going t...

The Neighbour made the most delicious strawberry rhubarb crisp the other night but my kid was sick and didn't get to eat any of it. He really loves rhubarb and has been talking about wanting strawberry rhubarb pie all week. I love him but not quite enough to make pie crust today in this heat but I was up to making a crumble. We found some nice rhubarb at the market and the local strawberries have been insanely sweet and delicious so we were in luck. I decided it would be safe to use Smitten Kitchen's basic recipe and just add a few tweaks because I find her baking is always pretty spot on. I added some crystalized ginger to the crumble topping and replaced half of the sugar with maple syrup in the filling but otherwise, I followed her recipe and it was really delicious. The next time I make it, and there will definitely be a next time, I will add even more ginger to the crumble because the few times I got a nice little chunk in a bite it was amazing. I also think I will pick u...