The Yum Yum Factor

So, we just got back from a trip to Paris and Rome and my head is so full of recipes that I want to replicate that I almost don't know where to start. Keep any eye for all of my upcoming posts about the trip so I can share all of the great things we ate and the fun stuff we did, but for now, here is my first recipe inspired by our travels. I bet this guy could use a good carbonara You can't go to Rome and not binge on carbonara and even though that is exactly what we did,  here we are, needing more. We make carbonara all the time and I can't believe that I haven't used the Instant Pot to cook the pasta all this time. I am the first person to lecture about adapting EVERYTHING to the pressure cooker, whether it's suited to it or not, but because this dish relies on the starchy pasta cooking water,  it makes even more sense to cook the pasta in the pressure cooker. When you pressure cook pasta, you are always left with this thick, starchy water...

I don't trust people who don't love bacon. Even my friends who don't eat meat will admit that the smell of frying bacon is enough to send them over the edge and those who were not always vegetarian can still get teary eyed over the memory of the taste. To me, bacon is a perfect food. It is salty, fatty, crispy, smoky and it is just as great with sweet as it is with savoury. Honestly, even bad bacon is tasty but why not just go with GREAT bacon? I was approached by duBreton to come up with a recipe using their product to celebrate International Bacon Day, which takes place this year on September 3.Since I am one of the 90% of Canadians who love bacon, I jumped at the chance. To to be honest, it was a struggle to narrow my ideas down to one recipe. I had made a version of this crispy coating a while back to accompany my first ever pressure cooker mac and cheese recipe (I also used it again on my second pressure cooker mac and cheese recipe   ) and I make sure to ...

Last week I attended The Grate Canadian Cheese Cook Off - Mac and Cheese edition, hosted by the Dairy Farmers of Canada. We got to watch as four Canadian chefs went head to head in an attempt to woo the judges with their unique, elevated interpretations of this classic comfort food. Top Chef Canada alumni and popular Calgary caterer,  Nicole Gomes, made a really interesting Apple Beer Mac and Cheese that was only narrowly edged out as my favourite by the Smoky Cauli-power Mac & Cheese whipped up by defending champion,Chef Andrew Farrell, Chef de Cuisine at Halifax restaurant, 2 Doors Down. He took top honours in 2014 with his Crispy Greens Mac & Cheese and he looked reluctant to give up his crown. Chef Thompson Tran ( BC's The Wooden Boat) took the best name with his Cod You Believe It's Shmoked Mac n' Cheese but it was ultimately Toronto's own Chef Alexandra Feswick (The Drake) who stole the trophy out from under Chef Farrell's nose with h...

Earlier this week, I whipped up The King's Crashed Potatoes  using a bag of Blushing Belles, little yellow fleshed, pink skinned creamers from The Little Potato Company . We ended up eating those little crashed potatoes all week - with dinner, with breakfast and as a snack.

It's throw back thursday and so I am sharing this recipe that I made back in March of 2011 for NoReEats and decided to make again tonight. I have made a few changes since I started making this dish in an effort to lighten it up without sacrificing any flavour because if that can't happen, I will always go with the original, full fatty creamy dish but, in this case, I am happy to report that it's every bit as delicious as the original version that sported a full cup of 35% cream. It's bad enough that we are putting bread crumbs on our pasta - we might as well just throw in a bowl of rice and some mashed potatoes, really. Think of it as an ode to carbs and just don't eat it every day. In the end, this pasta is everything I think pasta should be: quick, easy, flavourful and filling. Since we are leaving for our two week Jordanian adventure in a day and half-ACK- I am just trying to use up the food in the fridge and my fridge almost always contains arugula and b...

I grew up in London, Ontario which always felt like the Land of Corn to me. We took all of that abundant, sweet, peaches and cream corn for granted and we ate it at ever single meal from the first day it showed up at the store until the very last cobs were snatched up in early fall. My mom never did anything fancy with it, we just ate lightly boiled, buttered and salted corn on the cob. A 1 pound block of butter was set aside and sat out on the table just for rolling your corn in and if you had delicate fingers you could use those little corn on the cob holders that actually looked like tiny, plastic corn on the cob.Believe it or not, my dad had no teeth and that man could destroy a buttery cob of corn like it was nobody's business and barely leave a kernel on the cob when he was done with it. True story. It's coming to the end of corn season so we need to find ways to enjoy the last of it. I had already grilled the corn for my charred corn/scallion salsa so that was alre...