The Yum Yum Factor

I really wanted Korean food the other day but I didn't feel like leaving the house, which happens. It was overcast, cold and dreary, I didn't have the car so that would also entail cramming my body onto the subway to go downtown...not today, Satan, not today. Luckily, I keep a pretty full pantry of Korean ingredients and had a couple pounds of chicken thighs in the freezer. I decided I could manage throwing a coat on over my pjs for a quick trip to the fancy pants organic market on the corner for some vegetables if it meant that I was going to be able to whip up some Spicy Korean Chicken Stew (Dakdoritang) Instead of the more traditional carrot, I threw in a sweet potato since they are both orange and added daikon because I like the texture and worked backwards on my math to adapt my regular recipe to the Instant Pot because not only did I not want to get dressed or leave the house, I also wanted it immediately. The one major change was to skin and debone the c...

The Kingston Social and I are teaming up again for the new year and resurrecting our monthly Supper Clubs, starting in January. For my first menu, I will be doing a Yum style Peruvian dinner. My MVP pop up was one of my most popular of 2017 but, not one to rest of my laurels,  I really wanted to add something new to the meal and because it will be in January, soup just makes sense. This particular soup is based on the classic Peruvian soup, Aguadito de Pollo, also known as Levanta Muertos which translates into a soup to wake the dead due to it's restorative, nourishing properties and I have been told that it may or may not be great for a hangover. I am down with that. The soup, at it's most simple, is made with tons of cilantro, chicken and vegetables, usually served with whole, skin on chicken legs or thighs but that is not really my thing. Instead, I removed the skin, crisped it up until it was transformed into a chicken chicharon/cracker. It is crispy, salty an...

So, what is congee, you might ask? It sounds exotic but it's really just a nice, soupy, savoury rice porridge that is the perfect remedy for frigid winter mornings. Even though we go for dim sum regularly, we don't usually order this because it's really filling and it cuts down on the amount of dumplings I can scarf so it's something I save for home, but, pre , I didn't make this as often as I would have liked. Since my wizard pot truly lets me set it and forget it, I plan to make a batch of this every weekend over the winter. I am NOT a sweet breakfast girl but any porridge that lets me garnish it with crispy pork, chilis and other savoury treats is the food of my cold, dark heart. You can make congee with any sort of broth but chicken congee is a great way to use up the leftovers from a roast chicken, whether its a bird you roasted yourself or a bubble chicken that you picked up at the supermarket. Just throw in the entire carcass, all leftover meat, some ...

One of the most comforting soups that I make is this Greek lemony chicken soup that is thickened with egg. Sometimes I make it with orzo but because I prefer to use a nice, starchy rice like arborio it usually takes a solid 45 minutes or so to make even if I have the chicken stock on hand. That's not super time consuming, by any means, but on nights where I realize that it is 7pm and I forgot to make dinner (which actually happens more than you can imagine),  knowing that I can whip this up in about ten minutes is thrilling in my little world.  If you want to make this on the stove, just cook it for about 30 minutes to make sure the rice is soft and tender. Oh, and after you add the egg, don't bring it back to a boil, just heat until just about to simmer and steaming - we don't want any scrambled eggs in our soup. I used Litehouse Salad Blend dehydrated herbs for this because in the winter, it can be difficult to find fresh herbs. Okay, its more likely that it...

One of my favourite things to make in my Instant Pot is risotto, which surprises nobody more than me. I have always railed against any recipes that claim to result in a creamy, rich risotto that ditches the need to stand in front of the stove, glass of wine in hand, and stir for 20 solid minutes. BAH! I said as I laughed in the face of the no stir, oven baked, microwaved risotto methods that were going to change my life. BAH! Bah, indeed because pressure cooker risotto is that recipe. I remained doubtful until I got my pressure cooker cookbook from America's Test Kitchen. Cook's Illustrated is like my bible and I use it to reference everything from recipes, methods and ingredients to products. They test the hell out of everything so we don't have to and they explain why what they did works so well so when they assure me that risotto cooked in the pressure cooker is amazing, I am pretty much obligated to try it. So, fast forward to today and I haven't ...

Okay, maybe it didn't make me a better lover but it certainly didn't make me any worse! Last week I made this chicken stew with beluga lentils   and it was so delicious and so easy that I am now on a mission to see how many variations I can come up with. I want to keep it from being boring and maintain the versatility that enables a dish like this to be added to the regular rotation. As I said before, this recipe is more of a template than a buttoned down recipe, allowing you to throw in what you have - the main ingredients being chicken and either brown, green or black lentils - the softer red and yellow will fall apart and turn into mush. I don't think I mentioned it before, but the basic idea for combining lentils and chicken thighs came from  Serious Eats . It was one of the first recipes I read when I was first researching ideas for my new pressure cooker. last week we had chicken thighs, fennel and beluga lentils because that is what was in my fridge Dec...

Okay, I don't do New Year resolutions, for the most part but I am kind of making one anyway. Due to high level adulting that my life has required over the last 6 months, I have not been cooking enough. It's gotten to the point where our waitress worries about us if we haven't been to the pub in a couple of nights and that is just kind of sad, seeing that cooking is kind of what I am supposed to do over here. Enter my Instant Pot. Because of this stupid, crazy amazing thing I no longer really have an excuse to skip cooking dinner. I can throw together a delicious, nutritious stew like this in almost no time. Honestly, from the first chop of an onion to slopping it into a bowl and slamming it down on the table, this dish takes under 45 minutes. This is my favourite type of recipe because it's more of a template than a recipe.The possibilities are endless and the flavour combinations are only limited by what you happen to have in your kitchen at the moment. Ye...

I have a cooking demo coming up this weekend at Harbourfront for the Hot and Spicy Festival where will talk about Blend and Extend while serving up my Mushroom Beef Kofta . To freshen your memory, Blend and Extend is a marriage between Mushrooms Canada and Ontario Beef where you replace a portion of ground beef with ground mushrooms in your recipes. This makes your meat go farther, cuts out lots of saturated fat, adds a portion of vegetable to the dish and really just lightens up whatever you are making. Because of this, my brain is on a full on blend and extend, mushroom trajectory. Now, The Kid has been gainfully employed all summer long at Harbourfront as a nerd camp counsellor but because his bento doesn't fit in his Murse (ManPurse) that he takes to work, he has been taking a smaller lunch bag with only cold items. It has been the summer of sandwiches for the poor, young soul who has had to learn to love sandwiches in a hurry. School starts next week and school mean...

The Kid's sweet 16 is upon us and we always kick off the birthday week with a family BBQ. We are going out for fancy pants Japanese on the actual day so i had thought a Greek mezes style meal would be nice and was planning to do my usual pork and chicken souvlaki but using the sous vide this time. The more I thought about it, the idea of doing two kinds of souvlaki felt kind of boring. I really wanted to sous vide the pork for souvlaki to see if it would solve the dilemma of dry pork, one of my pork souvlaki pet peeves (which it did, recipe coming soon), so that left the chicken. What could I do with chicken that would be easy to feed a crowd, that could be made ahead and just heated up before dinner? As I stared at my tray of boneless, skinless chicken thighs, visions of meatballs began to dance in my head. What if I threw the thighs into the meat grinder and added all of the flavours that would go into the souvlaki marinade along with some ground mushrooms for good meas...

This recipe is an oldie but a goodie and what with the weather holding fast at -30000556C for the last week or so, a young girl's thoughts turn to comfort foods. It's been all stews, soups and things that bubble up in the oven around here. This shepherds pie is a lightened up version of the classic, subbing chicken in for the ground meat, it leaves out the cream in favour of a mixture of stock and evaporated milk and you replace 1/3 of the potato /sweet potato with cauliflower for the topping. If you really want to lighten things up , you can replace as much as half of the potato with cauliflower if you like but it won't be quite as creamy. As always, feel free to change up your veg - if you don't like zucchini, replace it with something you do like - you know the drill by now. It's not that I don't enjoy a heavier, meatier shepherds pie once in a while but when I can make something a bit healthier without sacrificing the Yum, I like to do that. Chick...

This recipe is one of my most requested in real life and I just realized I have never out it up on the blog. I did post in on my other blog,  NoReEats  , a few years ago but it's time to repost it here. I don't always do it with a spatchcocked chicken and it works the same with skin on, bone in chicken pieces. Today I am making it with a couple lbs of thighs, for instance but if you are using a whole bird, spatchcock it. The olive oil really gives he lemony sauce a silky texture that is worth the effort just on its own but thankfully the potatoes and the chicken are equally addictive.  One word about about the amount of water added- I have heard from many people that the amount needed varies due to different cooking vessels, oven temps etc so I would suggest starting with 1/2 cup the first time you make it. Just keep an eye on it and if it looks like it starts drying out , add more, 1/4 cup at a time to ensure that there is always a bit of water in the pan. Yo...

Nothing makes me more exited than getting a package in the mail and opening it up to find some sort of tasty food item for me to try out. Okay, going out for dinner to some place that sells, crispy spicy Korean chicken wings would make me pretty damned excited at this very moment but getting a box of Nandos Piri Piri sauces came pretty close. I really love a good Portuguese rotisserie chicken and am pretty happy that Toronto is home to a large Portuguese community so there is no shortage of great places to get it but what makes Nandos Piri Piri a bit different is that their flamed grilled chicken originates from the  Mozambican–Portuguese community. The discovery of the African Bird's Eye Chili back in the day resulted in a dish that is much spicier than traditional Portuguese rotisserie. I was just about to make myself lunch when the box came so I switched out the intended aji amarillo sauce for some piri piri in my freshly made chicken stock (made from the remnants of a...