The Yum Yum Factor

Friday, Nov 14 So, I spent days and days packing and repacking. I removed items of clothing that I really wanted to take and tried to reconfigure everything. I bought those bags that you pack and suck the air out to make more room. I finally got it to a place where we were both tightly packed into one checked bag each and was worried about how to get the stuff we might purchase home. I know I won't be able to fit a baby camel in there but I was assuming I would buy lovely scarves, maybe some clothing, some lovely tiles etc. Then the texts started to come from Shack. Can you bring a whack of Maalox (WTF), a king can of Longbow beer... The last straw was the 10 lbs of text books The Kid plopped on the table that need to come because he has to do two weeks worth of work while we are away. I was barely able to fit in my own panties at this point. I was on the streetcar and went to the airline on my phone to check the baggage restrictions one last time when I noticed somethin...

EastSide Social  Last week, we finally made it to EastSide Social in Lesliville , admittedly a little late to the party. People have been raving about this new east end eatery since it opened last summer but, for some reason, I had it in my head that this was going to be straight up Halifax cuisine and, this will earn me some death threats, I have never visited the east coast for the food. To me, I have memories of lobsters boiled to within an inch of their lives, weird tasting donairs that the locals go mad for and all to often, thick, gluey chowder. I have always loved the east coast for the people, the scenery and the ocean and just kind of resigned myself to the food situation.

I love the idea of pork souvlaki. I love the flavours, I love the charcoal flavour that the grill imparts and I love any meat that gets dipped in lots of tzatziki. What I don't love is dry, leathery meat and, unfortunately, that is almost always the case when people try to cook small chunks of lean meat over the grill. That's where sous vide comes in. I just made my regular marinade and instead of cutting the pork into bite sized pieces, I cut my pork tenderloins into 1" slices and then after 24 hours of soaking in the fridge, I sous vide them before cutting some of the disks into chunks and skewering them (I left half of them as is and grilled the medallions, which worked even better) right before we threw them on the grill for a quick char. I finally have my perfect pork souvlaki - tender, moist (OH MY GOD THAT HORRIBLE WORD AGAIN) and with all the wonderful souvlaki flavours but without the dry, overcooked bits that are almost unavoidable when you grill them fro...

The Kid's sweet 16 is upon us and we always kick off the birthday week with a family BBQ. We are going out for fancy pants Japanese on the actual day so i had thought a Greek mezes style meal would be nice and was planning to do my usual pork and chicken souvlaki but using the sous vide this time. The more I thought about it, the idea of doing two kinds of souvlaki felt kind of boring. I really wanted to sous vide the pork for souvlaki to see if it would solve the dilemma of dry pork, one of my pork souvlaki pet peeves (which it did, recipe coming soon), so that left the chicken. What could I do with chicken that would be easy to feed a crowd, that could be made ahead and just heated up before dinner? As I stared at my tray of boneless, skinless chicken thighs, visions of meatballs began to dance in my head. What if I threw the thighs into the meat grinder and added all of the flavours that would go into the souvlaki marinade along with some ground mushrooms for good meas...

You know how you can go eat somewhere that you haven't been for ages and then remember why you used to eat there all the time in the first place? That would be Japango in the Beach for The Kid, right now. After our tasty Easter Sunday dinner last week, we returned for more unagi sushi pizza to end the week.

I have added a new feature to the blog, right over there ------------> It's a yummly button so that you can save my recipes straight to your yummly box. I have been using yummly, myself, forever and for some reason I just never got around to adding The Yum Yum Factor to their gene pool. If you aren't using yummly to search for recipes, it's time to change that so go over there and check it out but first, go straight to The Yum Yum Factor page   (don't worry if there isn't anything there yet - this is a new venture so it will take time to get it going) So, let's move on to something to eat, I am starving. Char siu is that sweet, sticky Chinese BBQ pork that you see hanging from hooks in the window of any decent Chinese restaurant. I make my own version of char sui all the time at home so it made sense that my first attempt at doing some sous vide pork tenderloin would be a batch of this stuff, right? I didn't really change anything, apart from t...

This week has been a bit busy but I kept my official food duties to a minimum since Shack was actually around in person for the first time in what feels like forever and I wanted to spend some time with him. Best meal of the weekend, as always, was enjoyed at our beloved Danforth joint, The Wren .  I tried a new cocktail, the Southwestern '75 - Cazadores anejo tequila, sugar, fresh lime and some cava is an $11 glass of heaven. Other than that , it was a night of old favourites; Southern Fried Chicken Sandwich for The Kid, The Wren Burger for Shack and Green Chili Chicken for me. The one new revelation was an order of Scalloped Potato Fries. Honestly. Bars of scalloped potato encased in panko, deep fried and served with a dilly dipping sauce. They can probably kill you but you will die with a smile on your face.

my beloved Habanero Squid at La Cubana on Roncesvalles It's Good Friday so I am going to make this brief. I had a few great meals this week so I will share that with you and maybe give you some ideas about where you can go and get a great snack over the long weekend.

Meet Craig Wong. If you have been living under a rock you may not have heard of   Patois , his Jamaican Chinese restaurant here in the fine city of Toronto. There isn't a "best of" list that he hasn't made since opening under one year ago and one of the things he is becoming increasingly renowned for is his brunch. I know, I know, Anthony Bourdin claims that brunch is only a way for the kitchen to use up the weeks leftovers to serve to hung over hipsters before it all goes bad but at Patois, this couldn't be further from the truth. His brunch menu relies on creative twists on classic dishes with everything made fresh for a menu that is truly a stand alone affair, with nary a repurposed leftover to be found.