The Yum Yum Factor

It's the holiday season and I have decided to take off the last couple of weeks leading up to Christmas so that I can get back in my own kitchen and just cook for my family after a busy year of cooking for other people. My family, understandably, is thrilled. The cobbler's family has no shoes syndrome is real. One of the first things I tried last week was the Instant Pot Beef Dip from  Amy and Jacky at pressure cook recipes  . Their methods are so well tested and always work like a charm, and this one was fabulous, as expected. Looking for something with a bit more kick, I used their recipe as a jumping off point to make this Korean Beef Dip. I often make really sloppy, delicious grilled cheese sandwiches out of my Korean Meatloaf and immediately thought that I would LOVE to make a Korean Beef Dip - all the same flavours in the meatloaf grilled cheese with with a spicy jus to dip the sandwich in? YES PLEASE This sandwich is perfect - sharp cheddar and kimchi/gochuja...

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...

Oh my, what a spring/summer I have had. For the last year I have been working as a hired gun, cooking for a local caterer, teaching classes as well as hosting pop ups and private dinners around Toronto.  To be honest, I have had a hard time balancing this new schedule so it was not a huge surprise when i fell ill, mid April. What was not expected was spending  6 weeks on my ass with a lung infection followed by a family situation that took me away from home for the last month. At this point, I kind of feel like a brand new, baby blogger, brimming with fun ideas for some new, tasty treats and I have promised myself I will slow down a bit and make time for The Yum Yum Factor as well as washing my hair regularly and eating while sitting down. First up are these Spicy Koreanish Meatballs that I served with this addictive  Kimchi Fried Rice by fellow blogger, Diversivore  . These babies are sooooooooo good. The sugar/chili pepper coating is a spin on my ...

Say that ten times fast. A rich, creamy matcha no bake cheesecake with a crust made out of Matcha Pocky granola is the dessert you need. Like, right now. Last week, I hosted a pop up night at The Kingston Social House , the place where I have been cheffing since last fall and hosting supperclubs and cooking classes for the last couple of years. It's like my home kitchen away from home but better, because my actual home kitchen is about 2 square feet. I decided on a Korean inspired comfort food menu consisting of a Kimchi Meatloaf Melt, Spicy Miso Soup with Korean rice cakes for the vegetarians and a variety of banchan style sides. Korean's aren't really known for their desserts so it took me longer than usual to come up with something until I bought a few packs of Matcha Pocky. If you aren't familiar with Pocky, you need to do something about that. Pocky are a biscuit stick with a coating of "cream" that is usually chocolate flavoured but th...

You can keep your because I have been craving my brand of KFC - Spicy Korean "Fried" Chicken- all week. They are like the sexiest little chicken nuggets on earth - all spicy, sweet and crispy. YUM Traditional Korean Fried Chicken calls for double deep fried chicken served with or without and addictive, spicy/sweet gochujang sauce and, personally, I can't get enough of it. Because I don't really like to deep fry at home all that much I usually "oven fry" my chicken and when I really want to make it even more comforting, I just make some boneless, chicken nuggets so that I don't have to wrestle with bones and all that comes with an intact chicken leg. Sometimes a girl just doesn't want to deal with tendons and skin. My Spicy Korean "Fried" Chicken Recipe Regardless of what style of KFC you like, you are going to need some potato salad, right? Since this is Korean Fried Chicken, it stands to reason that I am going to make K...

*I don't know what is going on with my template but at this time, I can't do anything about this damned all caps sitch, so my apologies in advance. I am not screaming at you. I haven't met a pulled pork that I don't love. I love South Carolina style with a mustard mop, I love it with tomato based BBQ sauce and a carnita will never be kicked out of my bed for eating crackers. All that said, the one I like to make at home is this recipe - gochujang is my spirit animal.  Before getting this pressure cooker, this was another one of those dishes that required planning a day before. Even if I didn't marinate the meat overnight, I had to get it ready first thing in the morning so it could sit for at least an hour or so and then get into the crock pot by mid morning to make sure the meat was cooked by dinner time. Frankly, I am just not always that together so it means that I don't make it all that often. The pressure cooker means that I can actually ru...

typical selection of banchan I am presently designing a set of banchan (the small plates of delicacies that accompany any Korean meal) for an "open mic" dinner that I am making for a place in Toronto called The Depanneur.  I will be serving a version of my BiBimBap Sopes so we are already starting from a Korea meets Mexico kind of place and that means that I want the banchan to reflect that as well. I have been experimenting with replacing some of the more traditional Korean ingredients with things that you might find on a Mexican dinner table with great success so far. For starters, both cultures love to pickle things and since the flavours meld together beautifully, it's been a ton of fun to experiment with different combinations although some have been more successful than others. Because I am not crazy pants, I am only sharing the success stories with you and trust me, there are often spectacular failures. The first recipe that I will share is this recip...

Some pretty fun stuff is on the horizon for this old gal and one of the things I really excited about is my stint as the guest chef at an upcoming drop in dinner at The Depanneur on Friday, October 16. Diners will be eating my BiBimBap Sopes  as well as a whack of banchan and I have been recipe testing like a mad woman for the last couple of weeks. The only thing that hadn't occurred to me, was that I was also going to need a vegetarian version of my dish as an entree. A vegetarian option to pulled pork???  I work with a knife, not a wand! I will be honest and admit that I was about to throw in the towel and just make a second, entirely different dish to feed to the vegetarians when I remembered reading about jackfruit and how it's THE go to ingredient to replace pulled pork in recipes. One google search revealed that this is absolutely a thing and by the way everyone raved about it,  I figured it was worth a try. Of course,  I was  highly...

After two weeks of doing almost nothing that doesn't involve sous vide, I felt like it was time to step off, go back to basics and make something that I would have loved before I discovered sous vide. I think I will have to start using the term BSV and ASV from now on. "Oh, I was so naive back in the day. I, too, used to love to BBQ steak BSV" "Oh, you poach in vinegar water? How cute. This is the only way I can imagine cooking eggs ASV" You get the picture. So, there is no funny story to accompany this dish. The day I made this, it was supposed to be sunny and 9C and, instead it was more like 2C and overcast. Is that an improvement over sunny and -33456666C? Of course. Does that mean I am still not bitter and have not decided that 2C and overcast is freezing cold and I was not getting out of my pjs for freezing cold? Of course not. I bought some stewing beef and I have been eating a ton of Korean food lately so I made a Koreanish Beef Stew, ...