The Yum Yum Factor

Nothing makes me more exited than getting a package in the mail and opening it up to find some sort of tasty food item for me to try out. Okay, going out for dinner to some place that sells, crispy spicy Korean chicken wings would make me pretty damned excited at this very moment but getting a box of Nandos Piri Piri sauces came pretty close. I really love a good Portuguese rotisserie chicken and am pretty happy that Toronto is home to a large Portuguese community so there is no shortage of great places to get it but what makes Nandos Piri Piri a bit different is that their flamed grilled chicken originates from the  Mozambican–Portuguese community. The discovery of the African Bird's Eye Chili back in the day resulted in a dish that is much spicier than traditional Portuguese rotisserie. I was just about to make myself lunch when the box came so I switched out the intended aji amarillo sauce for some piri piri in my freshly made chicken stock (made from the remnants of a...

baked potato+chili+cheese=happy men folk here at casa shack It was a bit of a slow week as far as exciting food experiences go but on Sunday, I finally got around to making   Marcella Hazan Tomato Sauce  after reading about it for years. It was very tasty but it didn't blow my socks off - I won't go into it again, just click the link if you want to hear all the gritty details about how I lose my blogger badge. I don't even recall what we ate on Monday so that probably means pizza was ordered. It happens. All I care about is that I went to see Gravity with a friend and that means that I dined on my personal crack, movie popcorn and I wasn't hungry at dinner time so I  just made myself a salad. I have to say, the movie, the company and the popcorn were wonderful and I highly suggest that you indulge in both of these things ASAP. Tuesday, Shack and I went to see ANOTHER movie in the afternoon - two days in a row spent eating movie popcorn and watching movies. ...

So, as a food blogger, you can't escape food trends. You wake up one morning and suddenly every man and his dog is making one pot pasta and then a few months later it's nothing but cake pops as far as the eye can see. Sometimes you get lucky and you are one of the mavericks who makes boozy popsicles before the trends catches on and you can feel like a rock star for two minutes but you usually just sit there wondering where in the hell these trends are manufactured. On the whole, I tend to shy away from many of them unless they truly intrigue me (which is also why I tend to stay away from holiday themed posts because, lets be honest, with 3330000000098898.43 food blogs out there making halloween themed recipes, do you really need any more from me?) With the recent passing of Marcella Hazan, the grandmother of Italian cuisine who taught generations of North Americans how to cook Italian food, we are seeing a retrending of her famous tomato sauce. This sauce c...

strawberry skor pavolva This past weekend was Canadian Thanksgiving which means I was busy shopping, cooking and cleaning in preparation for our Sunday dinner. We had the MVP family over as well as my mother in law and enjoyed a thankful feast of roast turkey, port gravy, portuguese cornbread stuffing (recipe coming soon), mashed buttermilk potatoes, lots of veggies and salad and two desserts. I made an apple pecan upside down cake  and a strawberry skor pavlova loaded up with dulce de leche drizzle and dark chocolate curls. I have to say that a big turkey dinner is truly one of my favourite things on earth and I am always especially thankful that the Canadian holiday usually falls early enough that it doesn't spoil my desire for turkey again by Christmas. Thank you Canada.

I know what you are thinking. Nothing says the harvest, fall and Canadian Thanksgiving like a berry pavlova! Whatever. You eat your pumpkin pie and leave me to my meringue for the love of god. Okay, I actually LOVE pumpkin pie, pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin creme brulee and every other, more traditional, thanksgiving type dessert. I did make an apple pecan upside down cake   too but I just really love pavlova and although I flirted with the idea of incorporating some pumpkin into it, I couldn't get the skor bar thing out of my mind and I wanted to keep it tasty but simple. There is enough work going on when you are making a big turkey dinner and two desserts and I love that you can make the meringue a day or two in advance and just throw it all together right before dinner.  As it happens, the MVP (most valuable Peruvians) family came for dinner and they devoured the pavlova in record time while the more white bread branch of the family (Shack and MIL specifically) s...

mural painting Nuit Blanche Last week started off with a bang. We joined our friend, Jen, and her little man for some Indian food when they met us at Delhi Bistro  on Queen East. The Kid's sensei has often raved about this spot and for some reason, I have never been there. From the outside, it looks kind of dark and uninviting and although I have been curious, it just never really drew me in. What a mistake on my part.

Nona and her tomatoes It's time again for the Great Canadian Food Experience . Every month we approach a different aspect of Canadian food and it's traditions and what it means to each of us. This month we are talking about preserving, which is clearly a huge part of our Canadian culinary heritage. Any country that enjoys a short growing season and long, harsh winters is going to depend heavily on food preservation and Canada is no different. From salting fish on both coasts to our modern freezers, we have always looked for ways to make our summer bounty carry us through until spring.

This was a much better week than last week but let's be honest, pretty much any week would be better than last week but enough about that. spicy miso tofu ramen from Ryu's Noodle Bar, just don't get exited about the rice What did I do this week? Hmmm, not a ton but what I did do was really cool. On Saturday we went to see the Bowie exhibit at the AGO and before we ventured in to that particular exhibit on a weekend we knew we would require some serious fortification so we parked by Baldwin St and popped into  Ryu's Noodle Bar . I like the idea here - you choose your basic ramen and one dipping sauce and then you can choose add ons like a half cooked boiled egg or wok fried veg and they also offer a combo menu so you can throw in some rice, gyoza and a free pop. The Kid ordered a combo with the shio ramen, a half cooked egg and gyoza, Shack and I both got the spicy miso tofu ramen and I got the half sized combo with wok veg. Shack ordered his combo with rice wit...

I was invited to an event at beautiful The St Lawrence Market Kitchen (upstairs at the market) to introduce me to Fresh Canteen  , a new dinner prep concept launched earlier this summer here in Toronto. It's a service that caters to people who want to cook fresh, delicious dinners in their own kitchens but are often just too busy to shop for all the ingredients they need. They are quite committed to using locally sourced products whenever possible and that appeals to me very much. I have used Supperworks in the past to stock up for those times that I am too busy to shop but you still have to put aside time to drive down there, put all of the stuff together and get it back home. You also have to remember to take those damned bags out of the freezer the night before so it will be thawed by dinner time so you can actually cook it which doesn't come easily to me.  I love the idea of everything for a dish being brought to my house for me by a handsome stranger. Okay, I just li...

I am really pissed off at this weather. It is just barely mid September and it is freezing outside. This is Toronto. We should be having a lovely, long, hot September, not a cold, windy, overcast September and I am about to just quit. I am not sure what I am quitting exactly, but I quit. The only good thing about this stupid weather is the fact that it felt like the right time to make an apple crisp. I got all exited about doing something new, maybe adding some chunks of dark chocolate with some crunchy nuts or something and made the mistake of musing out loud so that Shack got wind of my plans. I swear to god, this guy is turning into his father over night. Suddenly, there is only ONE way to eat apple crisp, three ways to eat pasta and the only thing I am allowed to add to homemade ice cream are either raspberries or strawberries.  I said to him "you do realize that I am a food blogger, right? I won't have much to write about if I can only make apple crisp with c...