The Yum Yum Factor

I am always looking for something fun to do during the summer. Look, as much as I love driving to Niagara to hit a few wineries and grab a bite, you can only do that so many times before you start to get bored of doing the same thing every weekend. On a beautiful summer weekend, heavy tourist traffic can turn a 45 minute drive into a 2 hour excursion and I just don't always want to taste wine, if you can imagine.

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...

I love sausages. The only thing I DON'T love about sausages is that they can be a bugger to cook. When you grill them, you can end up with half of them burnt on the outside but still underdone on the inside and then the other ones are overcooked and dried out. Don't even get me started about them busting open before they are done and losing all of their delicious juices. In the winter, I poach them, which works well, but I couldn't help but think that sous vide might be the answer to all of my sausage dreams. As always, I read a hundred articles about sous vide pork sausages before I started and the general consensus was to cook them at 60C or 140F for anywhere from 1 to 2 hours. I had three types of pork sausage and, as you can see down there, I sealed some of them in my Food Saver bags and I left the two Italian sweet sausages for the zip lock bag. I used my Anova Precision Cooker with my polycarbonate bin and I watched House of Cards while they cooked. I...

Winter is just around the corner and I find myself craving stuff like chili, stew and soup. Went I came to the blog looking for my chili, I was surprised to find that I didn't have a straight up recipe for my regular chili. I found a great recipe for  Red Chili Pork and Beans , Lentil Chili , and a Chili Chicken Soup  but no simple, meaty chili. I was sure that I had posted it at some point and after a search, I found it on No reEats, the blog that documented my year of never repeating a recipe. To be honest, that year was such a blur of stress and mental anguish, that I think I have blocked most of the meals from my memory in order to protect my fragile psyche.  I made a batch of this stuff over the weekend and realized that I had to share it with you guys because it's too good to keep to myself. This fills my 5 quart heavy pot or my 5 quart crock pot. It freezes beautifully by the way. Chili with Chorizo makes approx 4-5 quarts small glug olive oil 500 ...

I live in the far reaches of Toronto's east end so to get me to make my way to the far reaches of the west end requires something special to tempt me out of my lair. The Workshop By Latitude was just that kind of place. A restaurant that is focused on cheese, beer and wine with a resident cheese master on site? Rumours of cheese soaked in beer for months?  Oh yes, that will get me out to the west end.

You know what I love about cooking vs baking? When you really mess something up while you are baking, you are often screwed, requiring the finished dish to be trashed and you waste all that time, energy and food. That reason, alone, is probably why I am more of a cooker than a baker. Well, that and the fact that I don't have much of a sweet tooth which one look at the tags on this blog will indicate. I am not ashamed to admit that I can be very absent minded. I cut myself a lot, I break glasses all the time and, in fact, we no longer buy nice stemware because I will just break it all. We use these plastic Govino glasses  and Shack only breaks out the real wine glasses when we have guests, allowing those guests to drink out of them. I am allowed to drink out of my little turkish tea glasses and actually prefer to drink my reds Italian style in the heavy, short rock glasses that are also on the approved drinking vessel list. Basically, I am treated like a toddler by own family ...

Whenever I find fresh poblano chilis at the market, I choose to see it as a sign from the cosmos, telling me that I need to make a batch of chili verde STAT. I am not one to ignore such signs but was seriously considering just taking them home to toast and freeze for a later date when I then turned the corner to see that pork shoulders were on sale. At that point it occurred to me that I would bring a pox on my house if I kept walking. It's like the universe wants us to eat more pork. Add to that the fact that I am working on a recipe that would require some sort of pulled pork and two pork roasts were in my cart before you could say Tha-tha-tha-that's all folks! Chili verde, a soupy stew of pork, tomatillos and green chilis, is more Southwestern than straight up Mexican and if we are going to be all hung up on authenticity, we should be using hatch chilis. I have been told, much like Texans refuse to call anything with beans in it chili, the fine people of the south...

The Neighbours are having a little St Patrick's shindig tomorrow night, which I was very exited about. Unfortunately, I now have to work for a zillion hours tomorrow so I won't be able to attend, but luckily Shack and Little Shack will be there and I know that my wonderful Neighbour will save me some of her delicious stew and a nice slice of home made bread to eat when I finally get home. Wanting to contribute to the meal, I offered to do a dessert but I knew that I didn't want to make anything green. I understand the kitsch factor of green beer and green cake/icing/random dessert but unless we are talking green tea ice cream, I just don't find foods that are not supposed to green very appetizing after they have been dosed with green food colouring. I don't really want to drink green beer or eat a green cake. I searched high and low and finally found  these Black and Tan Cupcakes at Dinner With Julie  and knew that I had found the perfect treat. Kind of...