The Yum Yum Factor

Sometimes my favourite recipes are the result of a mistake (or what I like to call, a happy accident), an empty pantry or when Shack, mistakenly, turns our small freezer off overnight and when I check it in the morning, a bunch of stuff has thawed out. Since this is what happened this time, it meant that I was left with a whack of lamb, one pork chop, a hunk of peameal bacon and a bag of chicken stock that had to be cooked in order to put them back in the freezer. I threw the pork and a little lamb rack in the sous vide and was about to bag up the little lamb roasts when I decided to turn that into a nice stew to freeze in individual servings for The Kid's lunches. Yes, I know. My kid takes lamb stew in his lunch, so sue me. This stew is a mish mash of different Middle Eastern flavour profiles that I like. Persians love turmeric, the current wonder spice,  the red pepper paste is Turkish and preserved lemon is most commonly used in Moroccan cuisine so this is not any sort ...

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...

Oh, it's all blend and extend all the time in this house right now. Last week, I finally got around to trying this method of adding ground mushrooms to ground beef in order to make your meat go farther and add a serving of vegetable to dishes while you are at it. The result were these  Jamaican Patty Pops  and I have to tell you, I was actually kind of amazed at how much the addition of the mushrooms worked as far as texture and and keeping the meat moist was concerned. I spent the rest of the week perfecting these Middle Eastern Inspired MeatBalls, which had been my runner up idea for the appetizer challenge until I got it right. These little meatballs are also great on their own and made a nice little dinner served with a  dollop  of  tzatziki, a greek salad and a chunk of bread. If you are lucky to live near a store that sells middle eastern groceries, you can find the preserved lemons, pickled turnip and sumac there and some larger grocery ch...

The Kid is sick and like a dog, this kid is stoic. He always says he is feeling okay, never wants to stay home from school and actually refuses my offers of a day in bed because there is something wrong with him. What kind of weirdo doesn't jump at a sick day from school? Clearly he did not get the memo on how to deal with the mansick. To be perfectly honest,  if I didn't watch this kid spring from my loins with my own eyes I would make myself take a maternity test. A sick young man requires a nourishing soup that will be smooth enough that it won't hurt his delicate, froggy throat on the way day but bright and tasty enough to tempt his failing taste buds. He lives for miso soup so I make him cups of miso like I make him cups of tea but there needed to be a soup with a bit more substance. This lemony, thin soup is perfect for these cold weather, feeling too crappy to even want to eat the delicious lunch my mother packed me days. The mix of preserved lemon with fresh...

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...

I have had amazing luck with my herb garden this year so I kind of almost keep forgetting about it. In the past I grow everything in pots and they do okay but this year it's like a mutant steroid farm out there and I just can't use all the herbs fast enough. I am not worried about the 400 lbs of oregano, thyme and rosemary since they all dry really well but the basil either had to be consumed this weekend or it was going to go to pot so I had no choice but to make some pesto. I like a traditional pesto well enough but I like to change it up all the time. I love to add arugula, change the nuts and throw in something to give it a bit of heat. I almost never use pine nuts since I was attacked by them during the great PINE MOUTH EPISODE . I was part of a year long experiment where two friends and I documented our year of never repeating a recipe. I will tell you right now that even though I think of myself as a very good, adventurous home cook who thrives on variety, h...

 When I spied this blog post on The Cook Who Knew Nothing, I knew I had to make it. It felt like a great excuse to try out some new ingredients like preserved lemons, pomegranate molasses and baharat spice which are all things that I think about buying but don't because I am not sure what to do with them. North African cuisine is still very unfamiliar to me and I am just really starting to learn about Middle Eastern food this year. There are enough familiar flavours in this food that it feels like something I know but, at the same time, with these kicks of either new tastes or new combinations of spices that I wouldn't normally put together. I can't wait to try this chermoula with some fish and perhaps next time, I will up the chili and make it a bit hotter but otherwise, I wouldn't change a thing at this point. The chicken was just as good over the next couple of days either over rice or in a pita as a sort of shwarma like sandwich with some tahini sauce, pickled ...