The Yum Yum Factor

Last night was the San Pellegrino Almost Famous Chef Regional Competition and we now know that Canada will be sending   Jean-Christophe Comtois of École hôtelière de la Capitale in Quebec City to Napa in March. There he will compete in the 11th Annual Finals Competition along with competitors from 75 other culinary schools across North America. His winning dish was one of my favourites and was causing quite a bit of rumbling and happy noises on bloggers row. The little square of deep fried, crispy polenta provided such a nice crunch to balance out the silkiness of the veal and the puree. I also really enjoyed Kellie Callender's dish of salmon with a beet infused quinoa, voted People's Choice. For now, go and download the Almost Famous Chef Recipe Ebook  for lots of other great dishes from contestants, past and present. It was a stressful, pressure filled night of cooking, plating, presenting and then justifying their dishes to the panel of judges in front of ...

Oh gochujang, oh gochujang, could I possibly love you any more than I already do? I THINK NOT! I am slowly letting this stuff take over my life and never tire of finding ways to incorporate it into my regular recipes. All I have been able to think about all week is a korean inspired meatloaf but everyday life has conspired to thwart my desires. I even went to the store for meat so I could make it yesterday and they had no pork or beef on sale. I go to the grocery store across from The Kid's school a couple times a week early in the morning to buy meat because they mark tons of stuff down to make way for the day's fresh shipment. It's a small store and it doesn't have tons of room so every morning they mark down a crazy amount of meat - I have been getting a picnic pork roast every week for approx $2.50 but I have to get there nice and early. Yesterday, not only had all of the pork butts sold, all of the meat was gone. The only thing left that I could buy for a ...

I made these  Bibimbap Sopes  a couple of weeks ago and it opened up a whole new world of pulled pork for me. Out of that single batch of pork we ate tacos, sopes and sandwiches. I ate the last dregs of it over some rice for lunch and the only reason I haven't made it again already is because Shack has been working on a frozen lake far too north for me to even acknowledge his exact location. We weren't expecting him until the weekend at the earliest but he called to say he was on his way home AND it just happened to be Valentine's day so guess what I made? He had spent ten days eating wings, poutine, wings, fries and more wings at one of the two or three truckstops that were available to them so, to be honest, I could have just made him a  sandwich with nice italian cold cuts on really nice bread and he would have been thrilled. I could have done that but everyone knows that the way to a man's heart is through his pork gland. As much as we all loved it the...

This post is short on recipe, but long on story. For Shrove Tuesday, I made those incredible Browned Butter Ricotta Pancakes  which served two purposes. Yes, they were crazy delicious and it was the first time I had ever made such a thing and that is all good.  Whatever. Most importantly, it used up half of the container of ricotta that was sitting in my fridge, silently judging me every time I opened the door for buying something that I never use and would most likely end up throwing out 2 months after the expiration date. THAT was a major accomplishment for a procrastinator like myself. Nice work Carole. The only problem that remained was the lingering ricotta in the container. It's far too soon to make the pancakes again and it's just sitting in there, making me feel guilty before I have even thrown it out. Cut to yesterday - our tiny school's annual bakesale to raise money for Free the Children  and I volunteered to make the raffle cake. I made thi...

I have been staring at a container of ricotta in my fridge for weeks now. We bought it for Shack's lasagna but then he thought he needed more and bought a bigger container of the stuff from Costco and used that instead. I don't use ricotta all that much and I didn't know what to do with it but I knew that I didn't want to end up throwing it out. I spent a couple of days toying with the idea of doing muffins so I read recipes, looked at tastespotting, read more recipes and nothing spoke to me. The easy way out was to make stuffed pasta but Shack is away and I am trying to not eat pasta while he is gone because when he is home, we eat it way too often. Then, last week a little voice in my head started to whisper "ricotta pancakes would be nice".

Gong Hey Fat Choy! It's day two of Chinese New Year and I am good to go with our friend, the snake. I cleaned the crap out of my kitchen on Friday and on Sunday, I didn't clean, I didn't wash my hair, I didn't sweep. To be safe, I spent the entire day in pjs and lounged around reading, I watched a movie on my iPad and then I reclined on my couch watching the Grammy Awards. The snake is going to be good to me. One of the traditional things to eat during Chinese New Year are noodles. Noodles represent longevity so if you want a long life, make sure you don't cut them while preparing them or eating them. You have my permission to slurp up entire mouthfuls of noodles - NO BITING MID STRAND IF YOU WANT TO LIVE A LONG, PROSPEROUS LIFE. If you choose to bite down, it's not on me. I warned you. Growing up, I thought Chinese food was nothing but sweet and sour chicken balls, sticky, neon red sauce and chicken fried rice. I moved to Toronto and wa...

I have been fortunate enough to be invited to watch the Almost Famous Chef competition for three years in a row. The S.Pellegrino Almost   Famous Chef Competition is a cooking competition that brings together students from over 75 culinary institutions across the United States and Canada. During the competition they battle for a chance to compete for all kinds of great prizes and be judged by nationally renowned chefs at the finals competition in Napa this March.  This whole thing is a kitchen smack down between over 75 culinary students from across North America. Each region sends it's winner to a final contest that takes place in Napa Valley in March. They are judged on their cooking skills but also on how professional they are, how well they perform under pressure (god knows a professional kitchen might present a bit of a stressful working environment from time to time) as well their performance while being questioned by the media and the judges. me and the 2012...

This week's Gastropost challenge is to write about your favourite condiment and it couldn't be a more timely subject for me because I have fallen madly and deeply in love with the korean hot pepper paste,   gochujang . We are heavily into asian food but I have to admit, that I didn't know much about korean food beyond kimchi and bulgogi because we are too busy eating Japanese, Chinese and Thai food all the live long day.  Then, one day, we had lunch at This End Up  here in Toronto and I ordered the fried chicken thigh sandwich: FRIED CHICKEN THIGH - FRIED CHICKEN THIGH/ PICKLED CELERY AND CARROT/ ARUGULA/ GOCHUJANG SAUCE/ BLUE CHEESE SAUCE that's straight from the menu people. I thought I had died and gone to heaven and I don't even LIKE sandwiches. Then the chicken wings came out coated in this sticky red sauce and sprinkled with sesame seeds. God golly, miss molly! What the hell was that flavour? It wasn't siracha - siracha who?? It...