The Yum Yum Factor

The Korean Village Restaurant We made a last minute decision to go out to eat at around 7:45pm on Saturday so we were not surprised to find a lineup at the Korean Village Restaurant  in Koreatown on Bloor. This place was my very first introduction to Korean Food almost 30 years ago (it's been around for 35 years, opening in 1978) and it's still a restaurant that I want to return to, even if there have been a zillion Korean restaurants that have opened since then. That said, we almost never go out for Korean and I hadn't been here since The Kid was small and we would come for lunch when we were in the neighbourhood. We joined the queue and waited for our turn to be seated. The only male waiter, who may or may not be the son of the infamous owner, reputed to be a former movie star and still quite glamorous as she quietly lords over the front desk, kept looking nervously in our direction. We were actually quite happy to wait our turn ...

I wanted to make a cake to raffle off at our Magical Unicorn School's halloween party and the only thing I knew that I wanted to do was use black food colouring in ganache and drip that down the sides. I found some rubber black mice and and really liked the idea of black on black. Red Velvet cake was the original plan when I came across the most delicious sounding recipe for a pumpkin spice cake and I changed my mind, which is, of course, my prerogative. I would make a Pumpkin Spice Layer Cake with Spekulas Cookie Buttercream and Spooky Ink Black Ganache.

It's time to revamp an old recipe using a version of my new beloved blend and extend method but this time I am trying it with ground pork. I am happy to report that it works just as beautifully with ground piggy as it does with ground beef and I am plan to blend and extend all of my ground pork recipes over the winter. This is really just a solid, basic chili recipe using ground pork instead of ground beef and you could totally replace the pork with beef without losing anything. For that matter, you could sub in ground poultry as well. Chili with Pork and Mushrooms 350g ground lean pork 150 g mushrooms of your choice, ground in a food processor until crumbly glug of olive oil 1 onion, finely chopped 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped 1 stalk celery, small dice 2 cups tomato puree 3/4 cup chicken stock (or beer but I didn't have any) 1 540 ml can black beans, drained and rinsed 1 cup tomatillo salsa ( I use the PC brand but use what you have) salt and peppe...

a Kamayan dinner at Lamesa Filipino Kitchen

You might think that BBQ season is on the way out, but now is the perfect time to haul out your smoker. To celebrate smoking season, Ontario Gas BBQ is giving away 5 Grill Pro Traditional Horizontal Offset Smokers. You heard that right, 5 Free Smokers are up for grabs. If you have never been out to the Ontario Gas BBQ store, you are in for a treat because it is truly BBQ heaven. With over 150 different kinds of barbecues from propane and gas to charcoal and electric, smokers and more, it's impossible to not find what you are looking for. They are also home of the Charcoal Room featuring Charcoals of the World with over 10 brands of premium hardwood free of chemicals and additives. They regularly stock charcoal from as far away as Africa and Indonesia so if you think all there is to buying charcoal is running up to the corner store, think again. 

chefs Gentile, Batali, Florence and Hughes testosteroning the joint up at the Media Press Conference for the Delicious Food Show Last weekend was Thanksgiving up here in the Great White North and so we drove out to Westport, Ontario to spend the weekend with family. Like all good Canadians, I cooked up a turkey feast for the first time in ages and it was delicious, if I do say so myself. Why, oh why do we not eat a full turkey dinner once a month?? WHY?

Pretty much the only interesting things we saw all night at this years Nuit Blanche We had so much fun last year at Nuit Blanche that we stayed out til the wee hours, just wandering the downtown core, looking at all of the cool stuff and enjoying being out in the city while it was alive and bustling and full of life. It was like falling in love with the city all over again and all year, we have looked forward to going back. On Saturday night, we bundled up, hopped on the subway with our $11 special events pass and hoofed it down to University and Queen. 

linguine with shrimp, spiced light cream sauce  St Clair West is really in the midst of a restaurant boom lately and I suddenly find myself venturing out there to eat more and more. Before this last year, the only thing that could get me to make the trek to St Clair West was The Stockyards but that's all changing and the list of places that I have been to and loved and that are on my to do list grows at a steady pace.

Did you know that Kyoto is a sister city to Boston? They became sister cities back in 1959 and, in fact, their gift of the Japan House to the Boston Children's Museum is thought to be the most expensive gift ever given to an American community from a foreign sister city. The two cities collaborate on various events throughout the year and are very tight.

The week started off with a bang when Shack and I offered to cook dinner for a good friend's birthday gathering. It quickly went from 6 to 8 guests to about 16 within 24 hours so, of course, we did a big, old Southern BBQ Porkapalooza with almost 30 lbs of meat between the side ribs and the pulled pork. It's the perfect meal to make when you are not sure how many people are going to show up. We had one gluten free guest so I made my first gluten free cornbread and thought I had taken care of any special needs and  then we had two non meat eaters RSVP a couple of hours before dinner. WHAT TO DO?

I think I have shared the fact that we don't drink cow's milk on the blog before. I mean, we put a splash in our coffee and I bake with it and eat ice cream but to pouring a big glass of cold cow's milk is just never going to happen around here. Nobody is lactose intolerant or allergic, although I have been tempted to lie about that over the years. Back when people would get all up in my grill about not giving my toddler huge glasses of icy cold cow's milk because it was going to cause him to never grow, I wish I had a picture of my future 6' 15 year old to waggle in their faces. When The Kid was little, he would act like you were trying to kill him if you tried to give him a glass of milk. Because of this, we have depended on alternate forms of milk type drinks to make our morning smoothies, put on cereal etc and our favourite is almond milk.