The Yum Yum Factor

  More adventures in adopting a more heart healthy diet mean more vegetarian meals with less sodium, healthier fats and a soupçon of cheese to punch it up. We have been having a lot of braised beans like the braised romano beans on polenta that I did for Ontario Beans. these beans have become a weekly thing in our house I know that all kinds of beans are now approved so it was time to move onto lentils. My favourite lentils are either Beluga or Du Puy but I haven't been able to find those on any of my online ordering platforms and I have been using plain old green lentils and, rest assured, they work just fine. Just don't use the red lentils because they disintegrate into mush, which is delightful in other recipes, but not in this one. If you use low sodium broth, use less kosher salt. If you use a salt free broth, you will have to up your salt a bit but the roasted tomato/feta and chili oil add so much flavour and saltiness that you don't need as much as you might normally...

  I tried to make shakshuka for five days.  Day 1: ordered all the ingredients I needed online for delivery. Shit, can't get it til tomorrow. No problem, we will eat something else tonight but super excited for tomorrow's dinner Day 2: groceries come! Time to start.....oh, wait, what? You feel like ordering Thai? But I was...okay, Thai does sound like it would hit the spot. Shakshuka tomorrow, FOR SURE Day 3: make the shakshuka tomato/red pepper sauce in anticipation of tonight's shakshuka. Sit outside with my neighbours for a glass of wine and the next thing I know, we grab The Kid and venture on down to sit on the patio at The Pub. It's the only place that will let us take a table for 8 so we can sit at opposite ends of the table and their salt and pepper wings are really delicious..... Day 4: TODAY IS THE DAY. WE are making this damned shakshuka if it kills me, but first, a visit to drop off something to friends we haven't seen since January. Go to drop it off on...

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...

We love edamame. If you have ever eaten sushi, you have probably had steamed, salted edamame in the pod and might not even know what edamame is apart from the fact that it is a tasty snack. Let me give you quick answer: it is the preparation of immature soybean in the pod and it's packed with protein, fibre, folates, vitamin K and more. In North America, we just call the actual soybean edamame, regardless of how it's prepared or whether it's in the shelled or removed. One of my favourite, quick lunch bag items, we go through this stuff like an ape goes through bananas. As much as we love the stuff, I am becoming increasingly wary of the soybeans coming from overseas because I can't really be sure about the quality. I keep reading all kinds of stuff about GMO's and other sketchy practices in production, never mind the fact that they are coming half way around the world to land in my freezer so who really knows how fresh they are? It is widely reported that 99% ...

I honestly feel like all I have done lately is go out to eat. I am either at a media preview for someone's new summer menu or a cocktail party to promote Savour Stratford, which is great so don't get me wrong. I just feel like I haven't cooked anything beyond dippy eggs and toast for weeks. Father's Day was the perfect excuse to grill up a couple of beautiful striploins, bake some potatoes and make a giant salad. Simple, delicious, and most importantly, made by my own hot little hands. I taught my first cooking class at Loblaws a couple of weeks ago and it went very well, I think. Nobody threw things at me or booed and, most importantly, everyone seemed to actually listen to me. I was given a recipe for a seafood chowder with fennel and then I was to supply a second of my own choosing. Since the chowder would use up half a bulb of fennel, it seemed like a good idea to use the other half in a salad and showcase a way to eat it raw. The ladies in the class...

Lately I have begun to go through my old posts at my other blog, No ReEats. I will start craving something and comb through this blog, sure that I not only made this tasty thing but I know I blogged it. I remember photographing it and writing about it but I can't seem to find it. For some reason the last place I look is No ReEats, sort of like the fact that Shack always finds his keys in the pants he wore yesterday but that is always the place he ignores because he is sure he didn't leave them in there. Anyway, I am going to start reposting my favourites from over there to here every Thursday so I can have them all in one place, at last. I have moved The Week in Yum to Saturday so, from now on, there will be two regularly scheduled postings each week. Let's get in the way way back machine.... From Thursday, January 26, 2012: It was a rare night where both of my men were going to be home for dinner so I kindly asked them if they would like to put in any requests. I ...

I have spent quite a bit of time in Greece. I lived and worked there in my late twenties and, oddly enough, I don't have a ton of great food memories. When I think of my time in Italy or in Spain, I can almost taste all of the delectable delights that I enjoyed on a daily basis but when I think of Greece, there are only a handful of food memories that I can still conjure up. While there, I would tell people I was from Toronto and they would often say "Oh, my brother/cousin/uncle has a restaurant on the Danforth. Toronto has the best Greek food in the world!" and I would always laugh but I kind of got what they were saying. In my head, I think that I don't care for Greek food but if you go through both of my food blogs, you will find that I actually cook Greek all the time. I never said I was a reasonable person. I find that I often turn to Greek food when I have to feed a crowd in an informal setting. It just makes so much sense to put out a spread of mezes an...

I am not sure I actually ever ate a fish dish like this in Greece but if they don't make fish like this, they really should. I make it exactly the same way I make Garides me Feta  and just sub in whatever white fish I have on hand for the shrimp. If shrimp is delicious baked with wine, tomatoes and feta then it stands to reason that fish will also be delicious cooked this way. Honestly, I am going to have to find a Greek person to put this in the Greek suggestion box because there is no reason to only use shrimp.  If I was cooking this only for myself and not having to feed my stinky family, I would totally add a handful of chopped, greek black olives and some hot peppers but they have to eat it too so I leave those things out and just add some to my portion after I plate it but it's not the same as it would be if the olives and hot peppers were cooked with the rest of the dish. If you like black olives and chili peppers then, by all means, add those things in the tomato...