The Yum Yum Factor

You all know how I love a show stopper and this one is a spectacular dish to serve the next time you have your boss/mother in law/new paramour over for dinner. Crispy, spicy little rice cakes with a centre of melty cheese, nestled in an acidic tomato vinaigrette and topped with a dollop of spicy yellow pepper/cheese sauce with a smattering of pickled red pepper, this baby is not only really delicious, it is a beautiful dish to behold. Maybe you have never had Peruvian food and you don't recognize some of these ingredients but they are so tasty that you need to get to know them. If you are not lucky enough to have a good, South American grocer nearby, these sauces are all available online and I have provide links to my Amazon store (yes, I get a few pennies if you buy things via my links) but there are also lots of online stores to purchase Peruvian items from. So, this is just my basic Pressure Cooker Risotto with the addition of the spicy pepper paste, aji am...

Poor Shack. Two of the things that he loves the most are things I almost never make for him - veal parmesan and arancini. To make arancini, you need to have cold, leftover risotto but, trust me, if I am going to stand over a stove, stirring rice, for half an hour, I am not going to put it all aside to use for fried rice balls. Occasionally, I might have gone out of my way to double the recipe so that I could make these the next day but, honestly,  that often just resulted in gluttony. We were left with all of us rolling around the house, moaning and groaning, with too much food in our bellies and still not enough leftover rice. Enter my Instant Pot. Since making my first batch of risotto in the pressure cooker, I have not looked back. I was the last person who wanted to believe that you could end up with a risotto that was indistinguishable from a lovingly stirred pan of soupy rice but, here I am, making risotto in the pressure cooker all the live long day...

the arroz de tomate of my dreams A few years ago we spent a couple of weeks in Northern Portugal and there were a few dishes that we ate constantly. We ate the garlicky clams with butter, vihno verde and cilantro every single day, the kid ate grilled sardines at least three times a day and at every meal, there was a bowl of tomato rice. Sometimes it was really soupy, like that one down there from Ponto Final  (I wrote about it here  ). It came in an earthenware cauldron and it continued to bubble and roil for most of the meal. That one was soupy and full of sausage but other times we were served a thicker version, usually with nothing else added in. I had forgotten about tomato rice until I attended a supper club that featured a multi course Portugese feast, prepared by my friend Paula Costa, of the blog, My Portuguese Kitchen   . Her rice was thick and creamy and full of seafood and since that night, I keep thinking about making it but it's been hot, I ...

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 ...

Never mind when Harry Met Sally. Whatever. Tonight, my new Anova met Instant Pot and it was glorious. Although I just got a new  Anova Precision Cooker Wifi  , I have had an Anova sous vide for over a year now and I love it but this one is even cooler.

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...

If you do a search of my blog, you will see that we appear to eat a lot of risotto. As soon as the weather turns colder, risotto gets bumped up to the regular weekly rotation. If you have some stock, a glass of white wine or a bottle of beer laying around, a handful of leftover meat or seafood, some vegetables or maybe some dried mushrooms, a little chunk of parmesan and a pat of butter lying around, you have dinner.

Sometimes things can just be simple, you know? It isn't all Risotto al Nero di Seppia  around here, although it is often all risotto. I saw a video of Merill from Food52 whipping up a corn risotto and despite the fact that we won't see local corn until the end of the summer that will seemingly never occur, I can think of little else. I just made a plain risotto the way I always do but took her technique of adding the raw kernels to the finished rice and covering the pot for five minutes to just cook the corn. I had never thought of doing that before and the result in just tender corn and, therefore, a beautiful, crisp texture in that sea of creamy rice. I think the only real change I made was to add fresh thyme to the stock because, to me, corn and butter must also have some thyme in there. I also topped it with some sherried mushrooms because mushrooms are always a good idea but it was delicious all on it's own. I am counting the days until August when I can make ...

What do you do with three cups of leftover risotto al nero de seppia ? Make arancini, of course. Although everyone in the house loves these crispy little risotto balls, I rarely make them because, frankly, I am still terrified of deep frying. The odd time I make them, I either bake them or pan fry them in a shallow pan with a bit of oil and although good, they aren't amazing. To really enjoy an arancini, you need the crispy crust that you crack to reveal the soft, creamy rice innards and you can really only get that crust by deep frying them. Now that I am 50, I have decided it is high time to face some of my fears in the face so I pulled out a small pot, a bottle of canola oil and my instant read thermometer and did what needed to be done. I am not going to tell you that it was a walk in the park, emotionally, but I buckled down and heated that damned oil all the way to 350F and deep fried these arancini like a boss. The panko adds a bit more substance to the coating but...

It was the The Kid's 15th birthday and I think I have made it pretty clear that when somebody celebrates a birthday in this house, it's allllll about days of eating whatever the birthday person wants to eat. From our Saturday dim sum feast at Luckee, through to his Saturday night, adult free, all you can eat sushi dinner with a group of his friends all the way to the actual birthday dinner, The Kid got to eat whatever his little heart desired. It also so happens that Easter fell the day before his birthday this year, so a turkey dinner was thrown in there for good measure. At first, he just requested risotto with either pumpkin pie or a raspberry pie. I got a pumpkin pie for Easter dinner and he was the only one to eat it so the same pie was going to have to do as his birthday dessert and he was A Okay with that but I couldn't pin him down as far as kind of risotto. He said "just plain risotto" I am NOT making a big bowl of plain risotto for his birthd...

Anyone who knows me, knows that I love making risotto and to me, it's something I often resort to when I am out of food, have no ideas and if dinner isn't served within the hour, I am going to have children's services knocking at my door. I know that to some people it is an intimidating, special occasion dish but to me, it's cooking for dummies. At it's most desperate - I mean simple, it's just a cup or so of arborio rice, whatever vegetable I find lying at the bottom of the crisper, scrape the ice off of a handful of frozen shrimp or the last dregs from the bag of peas that I found when I was scrounging around in the freezer for the shrimp, a carton of low sodium chicken broth, a bit of butter and fresh parmesan and dinner is on the table in half an hour. Out of white wine? Use some beer or port or sherry or skip that part altogether.  Sure, you are chained to the stove for 20 minutes of constant stirring but that also means you are forced to drink the wh...

We really don't like to go out on New Years Eve anymore. Just the thought of getting all dressed up, putting on makeup, getting a cab in the cold, being squished into a space with lots of really drunk people who are trying to have the BEST NIGHT OF THE YEAR is just exhausting to me. Back in the day we used to joke that NYE was for amateurs and that every night was NYE to us. We were young ,worked in the film business and we worked very hard but we also played very hard. Honestly, I think we were both secretly thrilled when we had a baby and could lay the blame on him for declining all the invitations until they just stopped coming and I was fine with that because I am just partied out. Now, the most exciting thing to happen on NYE around here is a rousing game of prosecco fuelled euchre with The Neighbours in our pjs and if everyone is actually still awake when the ball drops, it's a New Year's miracle. It's also a night for rich, decadent food because we ha...