The Yum Yum Factor

Tandoori Calamari from Pukka Saturday night was the first cooking demo in my "Not Your Grandmother's Rutabaga" Series at The Kingston Social Mumbai Sour My week started off the way I like my week to start off - with dinner at Pukka. Along with a gaggle of food bloggers, I was invited to have dinner there to sample a couple of old favourites and a bunch of new menu items, just in time for fall.  In case you have forgotten, you can refresh your memory here , when I gave the restaurant a full review after my first visit. I was super excited about the place then and nothing has changed. I LOVE this place. The first dish we tried was a Tandoori Calamari served with Coconut Chutney and Citrus Slaw, which everyone at the table loved. We had all eaten the Herb Infused Chicken Tikka before but that didn't prevent a fork fight over the last, tender morsels. Pretty, bright green chicken that is soft enough to cut with a spoon is served with a smear of Tamari...

The Week In Yum has been on hiatus so that I could go about my business adulting for the last month or so. For this week, I am going to show my week in photos with more posts about some of these things coming at a later date. So, first up though: Last week, I found out about a contest to become the next blogger ambassador for Canada Beef a couple days before the deadline. Of course, the only free day I had was THE DAY OF THE DEADLINE. That was when the wonderful folks at Heatherlea Farms came to the rescue and allowed me to run amok on their Caledon farm, communing with their Black Angus cattle. Frankly, the cows were not particularly impressed with me and my new selfie stick but Farmer Gord was a stellar host, driving my friend, Nancy, and I all over the place, letting us tag along to feed them and check up on these delicious looking beasts. So, if you are so inclined, voting ends tomorrow, Oct 25 at 11:59 CT, whatever time that is because I can't keep it straight...

typical selection of banchan I am presently designing a set of banchan (the small plates of delicacies that accompany any Korean meal) for an "open mic" dinner that I am making for a place in Toronto called The Depanneur.  I will be serving a version of my BiBimBap Sopes so we are already starting from a Korea meets Mexico kind of place and that means that I want the banchan to reflect that as well. I have been experimenting with replacing some of the more traditional Korean ingredients with things that you might find on a Mexican dinner table with great success so far. For starters, both cultures love to pickle things and since the flavours meld together beautifully, it's been a ton of fun to experiment with different combinations although some have been more successful than others. Because I am not crazy pants, I am only sharing the success stories with you and trust me, there are often spectacular failures. The first recipe that I will share is this recip...

Yes, Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving. It always coincides with Columbus Day in the States so if you Americans are looking for another excuse to enjoy a magical turkey dinner, claim yourselves some Canadian relatives, throw together a cornucopia and start a new family tradition. Turkey for Columbus Day! Knowing that most families never deviate from the sacred Thanksgiving menu that your great grandmother Alma set out, if you are feeling like you would like to shake things up a bit this weekend and switch out the mashed, buttered and brown sugared turnip,here are some ideas for you: Don't feel like actually cooking a big turkey but still want all of the flavours? Try this  Cranberry Glazed Turkey Meatloaf  and serve it with all the trimmings. Bust out of your stuffing doldrums and try my recipe for  Portuguese Corn Bread Stuffing  (if you can't find cornbread you can use any heavy, country style bread like sourdough or something) You can ma...

Some pretty fun stuff is on the horizon for this old gal and one of the things I really excited about is my stint as the guest chef at an upcoming drop in dinner at The Depanneur on Friday, October 16. Diners will be eating my BiBimBap Sopes  as well as a whack of banchan and I have been recipe testing like a mad woman for the last couple of weeks. The only thing that hadn't occurred to me, was that I was also going to need a vegetarian version of my dish as an entree. A vegetarian option to pulled pork???  I work with a knife, not a wand! I will be honest and admit that I was about to throw in the towel and just make a second, entirely different dish to feed to the vegetarians when I remembered reading about jackfruit and how it's THE go to ingredient to replace pulled pork in recipes. One google search revealed that this is absolutely a thing and by the way everyone raved about it,  I figured it was worth a try. Of course,  I was  highly...

Tuna Kinilaw-  a Filipino style ceviche made with albacore tuna, a coconut calamansi vinaigrette, fresh chilies, and coconut guacomole served with shrimp chips So, there are exciting changes afoot at Lamesa, Toronto's favourite modern Filipino restaurant. New Head  Chef Daniel Cancino is changing things up in the kitchen, putting his own, personal spin on the food he grew up on.  I have eaten here many times (you can read my first review  here ) when Rudy Boquila was there, and I have always really enjoyed it but this meal felt like marked departure for the place and I, for one, really like where the menu is going. Molecular gastronomy  + Filipino food? I would not have envisioned a happy coupling but in Chef Cancino's hands, it works. The food was lighter and more sophisticated, the presentation was beautiful and everything we tried on the new Fall/Winter menu was pretty amazing. My personal favourites were the Tuna Kinilaw, a Filipino style t...