The Yum Yum Factor

I make my  Instant Pot Butter Chicken  fairly often but I don't always plan well enough to marinate the meat overnight and I do believe that an overnight marinade is essential to achieve a rich depth of flavour in the final dish and avoid it tasting like bland chicken plunked into delicious sauce. My theory was that if I added the chicken marinade ingredients INTO the meatballs, it wouldn't have to sit for so long before I can cook the finished dish. We also really, really love meatballs. A quick search for meatballs on The Yum Yum Factor will reveal my obsession with these orbs of tender delight so it stands to reason that I eventually try to meatballify every favourite recipe at some point. I have been mulling a meatball conversion with Butter Chicken for a while but I have been so busy cooking at work, that I have barely cooked more than scrambled eggs in my own kitchen all year but I finally got around to making it this week. don't be alarmed by...

Meet Luisa. Luisa grew up in Portugal, went to school in Belgium, lived in Spain and France and spent a large chunk of her life travelling the world while she worked in advertising before she quit to become a dressmaker, working out of her stunning former ship part warehouse space directly facing the Tagus River in Lisbon. Then, this past February, Luisa decided to change course yet again, built a beautiful kitchen in her warehouse and launched her newest venture, Mesa Luisa. Offering her version of the more typical market shop followed by a cooking class and lunch, upcoming workshops and private evening dinners by appointment  , Luisa has reinvented herself as a chef, hostess, guide and story teller in her hometown of Lisbon. Oh, did I forget to mention that Luisa's two children are famous musicians? Her son is Salvador Sobral, the 2017 Eurovision winner (Portugal's first ever win) and he won by singing a song penned by his equally famous sister, musician Luisa Sob...

Sunset over the River Tagus I just got back from a ten day trip to Portugal - okay, it was actually eight days in Portugal and 2 days in Paris. I did things a little differently this time as I was taking my big sister with me to experience Europe for the first time and didn't want to be a slave to my notes. I was there in 2014 so I wanted to let her kind of set the tone and let's be honest, I will be back another time. Or two. Or three the view from the São Jorge Castle  This time, although I still had my lists and my custom made Google map which was basically my google map from 2014 with a whack of new and exciting places to eat and shops to check out, we ended up just kind of wandering around and everything worked out just fine. The intrepid adventurers I booked one activity in Lisbon and one in Porto, pre-booked all of our airbnbs and a train ticket to get us from Lisbon to Porto but, other than that, we just showed up. the magical Quinta de Regaliera...