The Yum Yum Factor

The weather has been so lovely this week and suddenly,  February feel more like March so I am having a hard time getting excited about making more stick to the ribs weekly specials at The Kingston Social. My brain is all about spring and sun and the need to be warm so all I want to eat is ceviche and fish and salad, drink Gin and Tonics on the porch and pretend it's time to start on the garden. With that in mind, I looked to North Africa for inspiration after making some carrots roasted with ras el hanout, a Moroccan spice blend, during my last cooking class at Loblaws. Ras el Hanout (means head of the shop or top shelf in Arabic) = North Africa = chermoula and chermoula = some type of seafood and since my latest obsession happens to be sous vide shrimp, a dish was born. You might think it silly to cook shrimp using sous vide when they already cook in minutes on the stove top but sous vide results in the most amazing texture. Since I intended to almost pickle the shrimp...

You can keep your because I have been craving my brand of KFC - Spicy Korean "Fried" Chicken- all week. They are like the sexiest little chicken nuggets on earth - all spicy, sweet and crispy. YUM Traditional Korean Fried Chicken calls for double deep fried chicken served with or without and addictive, spicy/sweet gochujang sauce and, personally, I can't get enough of it. Because I don't really like to deep fry at home all that much I usually "oven fry" my chicken and when I really want to make it even more comforting, I just make some boneless, chicken nuggets so that I don't have to wrestle with bones and all that comes with an intact chicken leg. Sometimes a girl just doesn't want to deal with tendons and skin. My Spicy Korean "Fried" Chicken Recipe Regardless of what style of KFC you like, you are going to need some potato salad, right? Since this is Korean Fried Chicken, it stands to reason that I am going to make K...

You might have noticed that I am not publishing new recipes quite as often as I used to lately, but, trust me, I have a good excuse. A few months ago, I was hired on to design the menu for a new spot in Toronto's east end, The Kingston Social House. They wanted to launch a wine/cocktail spot with a small but tasty menu that only opens from Thursday to Saturday nights. There are lots of other exciting things happening on the other days - Brunch on the weekends by Thick Cut brunch , regular community based workshops, an upcoming Tuesday night Tapa thing by a group of chefs.... it's bringing the little neighbourhood of Birchcliffe Village back to life! Kingston Social Nights belongs to the women Now that I am the executive cooker lady at The Kingston Social , aside from the regular menu, I have to come up a weekly special as well as a soup and this eats up a ton of my cooking energy. If you live in Toronto, I invite you to come to the Social for a drink and somethin...

Sometimes my favourite recipes are the result of a mistake (or what I like to call, a happy accident), an empty pantry or when Shack, mistakenly, turns our small freezer off overnight and when I check it in the morning, a bunch of stuff has thawed out. Since this is what happened this time, it meant that I was left with a whack of lamb, one pork chop, a hunk of peameal bacon and a bag of chicken stock that had to be cooked in order to put them back in the freezer. I threw the pork and a little lamb rack in the sous vide and was about to bag up the little lamb roasts when I decided to turn that into a nice stew to freeze in individual servings for The Kid's lunches. Yes, I know. My kid takes lamb stew in his lunch, so sue me. This stew is a mish mash of different Middle Eastern flavour profiles that I like. Persians love turmeric, the current wonder spice,  the red pepper paste is Turkish and preserved lemon is most commonly used in Moroccan cuisine so this is not any sort ...